The Falcon and The Turtle
by Luigi Esguerra
Summary: The year is 2015; Crimea has fallen to Russia recently, the United States is about to enter an unusual election, SpaceX has become an Internet sensation, and the good author has passed on...and, wait, is that a big turtle carrying four elephants on its shell and a big flat world going across the skies?
1. Introduction

This is a vision of a silly alternate future, a possibility of what we could do should the situation present itself, in fact this exercise in story writing and alternate future writing is nothing more than a rehash of the initial 'Houston we have a turtle here, a big one!' story which was set in the days of the Apollo program.

Things have changed since the 1960s and 1970s, for one we - the human race - had recently shot out an electric car into space for nothing more than to be silly, something unimaginable in the days of the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle programs when going to space was a privilege reserved only for scientists, those who have gone through rigorous training, and/or for the generally bright minds in the field of spaceflight and space sciences.

We are currently in another space race, and whereas the original one was a two horse race, this one is a multiple horse race and with bets all going to the private industry, particularly SpaceX (or Space Exploration Technologies).

This rehash of the original story aims to bring the history-lesson heavy story into something more readable for the present day reader, as much as I have crammed the original story with facts and plausible guesses of how the Apollo program could have gone Interplanetary, I was limited - very limited - by the fact that I cannot bring too much to the table or else it would be boring.

So here we are, the second attempt at this kind of story but written in my own way (the way that I ended up becoming a small time published author from where I came from) rather than a writing style that I have not done before.

This here would be the first and last chapter to be written solely to give technical data and/or historical information on spaceflight, much like how the original story had in the introduction and this here is to serve as a general briefing as to the sources used in creating the technical bits of the story.

Shortly before the point of divergence in the story, spaceflight has gone a long way from Sputnik, Yuri Gargarin, the Freedom 7 astronauts, and so on, however despite of its great achievements it was slow and losing political support, the Shuttle had been retired, the replacement of the Shuttle was facing delays, but the silver lining in all this would be the moment SpaceX has landed a booster that crossed the Karman line (a.k.a space) and reused it. (If you know your recent science and space news, you'll know the year of the point of divergence - 2015 for those unawares)

However the alternate history leading to the point of divergence is even more extraordinary, in order to have an understanding of the biggest 'what could have been' in spaceflight we should have a brief look at the post-Shuttle era and the rise of private spaceflight.

After the Apollo program, the U.S. Government decided to train the guns of NASA at reusability, or being able to bring back the entire - or most of - the spacecraft to be reused for another flight, this was supposed to lower costs and therefore make space more cheaper and accessible.

This culminated with the Space Shuttle, the famous Space Shuttle of the United States that was used to deploy and build humanity's greatest space constructs; Hubble, the International Space Station, and so on.

However, this Space Shuttle had not gone swimmingly well, in fact it claimed the lives of 15 astronauts and two Shuttle Orbiters during its run, and there are plenty more embarrassing facts about it, like NASA having to scavenge for old hospital machines in order to salvage the old computer chips from the 1980s for use in the Space Shuttle.

The Space Shuttle was to be terminated on 2011, and the program that was supposed to replace it was the Constellation program (or CXP) which was once described as 'Apollo on steroids' and it was placed into law by President George H. Bush in 2005.

This Constellation Program was to have a 188 tons to orbit heavy launch vehicle (the Ares V) and a human rated launch vehicle (Ares I), both using technologies derived from the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle, and their goal was the Moon and Mars.

It had the vision of setting up an expedition to Mars using a Martian Transfer Vehicle that uses nuclear engines, which was basically a rehash of Wernher Von Braun's 1969 Mars plan (the one using parts of the planned Nuclear Shuttle) in terms of technological applications (Nuclear engine? Check. A Lander? Check.) however the Constellation Mars Plan was bigger and grander, it caught the imaginations of many.

Cancellation soon slammed into the Constellation Program due to rising costs and general impracticality, this was replaced with the 2011 NASA Authorization Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama, which brought about the present Space Launch System that was supposed to launch on 2018 for a unmanned cis-lunar mission, but it was postponed to (as of the time of writing) December 2019 at the earliest. (But with several problems popping up, this schedule is expected to slip)

Instead what we have gotten so far was a car being blasted off into a Martian orbit by a private industry called SpaceX, owned by a man with a big personality and an even bigger vision; Elon Reeves Musk.

SpaceX has been making news recently, in fact CBS News had given SpaceX the title of 'Biggest Disruptor of 2018', and if you looked at the so called 'industry' of aerospace flight, SpaceX was not an earthquake, it was an Earth-shattering asteroid (or a Death Star blowing up Alderaan if you're so inclined to Star Wars.)

SpaceX in 2013 became the first private company to send a commercial cargo mission to the International Space Station, in 2015 they became the first people (not just as a private company, rather as a team doing spaceflight) to land and reuse an orbital booster, and in 2016 they were the first to land an orbital booster on an automated barge in the middle of the Atlantic.

The so called 'Space Race 2.0' was started (supposedly) when the C.E.O of Boeing said something around the lines of 'We'll beat SpaceX to Mars' and Elon Musk simply replied 'Do It'. However I think that Space Race 2 began with the launch of Falcon Heavy on February 8 2018, mainly because of Musk's showmanship skills in getting United Launch Alliance, Russia, China, Arianespace, and a bunch of companies to suddenly become competitive.

But the competition is FAR FAR FAR FAR OFF (in Musk's rear view mirror preferably) with the nearest first attempt at SpaceX-grade reusability (should everything go to plan, which as what we've seen with SpaceX's How NOT to land an orbital rocket booster video, is going to be unlikely) would be China's Long March 8 rocket (the new design) in 2020 or 2021, however there is a Chinese startup (LinkSpace, aka Chinese SpaceX) that plans to launch a Falcon 1 sized reusable rocket by 2018.

The United Launch Alliance, SpaceX's biggest competitor composed of two traditional aerospace titans; Lockheed and Boeing (as in they're the two among many that built the Saturn V), can't do much other than launch their semi-reusable Vulcan rocket in 2020, while still trash talking SpaceX through their puppet master owner, Boeing.

As for Arianespace (a.k.a the European counterpart of the United Launch Alliance) their C.E.O recently had what sounded like a meltdown during an interview with a European newspaper, in which - and I paraphrase from the translated version- he answered after being asked by the interviewer as to SpaceX's concept of reusability 'Don't ask me how they price their rockets so cheaply, ask them!' and 'We cannot have reusable rockets because we do not have thirty or so scheduled launches, I can't just tell my teams after building one rocket 'Alright guys, see you next year!'

Russia took an interesting U-turn, initially - and a day before the Falcon Heavy launch - President Putin signed into law a budget allocation to Roscomos (Russia's NASA) to build a sort of 'Soyuz Heavy' a rocket using the R7 Soyuz rocket to match the Falcon Heavy. But then a few months later, their Deputy Prime Minister - ex officio in charge of the space program - announced that Russia can no longer compete with SpaceX, period.

That surrender came from Russia, the largest launch provider post-Space Shuttle and shortly before SpaceX started executing twenty or thirty launches per year, the Russians - mind you - had more than 50% market share less than five years ago, now SpaceX has that 50% and more (about 70% market share for 2018, now that's how you run a company!)

So who else is planning to take on SpaceX? It's not much of the supposed multi-horse race perceived during the first 48 hours post Falcon Heavy launch. There's the plans for Skylon, a Single Stage To Orbit spacecraft, by the British, and India has something up its sleeve however there is still no announcements as of yet (though the speculation may have come from their 'Superpower by 2020' vision)

What you've just read was basically a simplified and summarized version of the whole ruckus with SpaceX and the supposed race to Mars that has been making the rounds in online news portals, reputable ones I must say, and it is not much of a race.

Anyhow, we now hand this to the story itself:

(A/N: Discworld was created and owned by Sir Terry Pratchett, all characters and settings belong to him/ his estate. SpaceX (and all related terminology, notably 'Falcon 9', 'Falcon Heavy', 'Dragon 1', 'Dragon V2', and 'Big Falcon Rocket') is owned by Elon Reeve Musk - a.k.a the most craziest inventor-billionaire we have so far, 'Blue Origins' is owned by Jeff Bezos ("Jeff Who?" - Elon Musk), United Launch Alliance is owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin)


	2. Prologue

You know it's a hell of a way to start a story by saying that I was abducted or coerced by men in black suits, but that's how my adventure into one of the most unusual places ever has begun, in fact it was not the best way to start any adventure story, but I digress.

There I was, 23:58 hours at night (or 11:58 pm for those that do not read Military Time), waiting in line to get a copy of the last book of an author that has recently passed on, his name was Sir Terry Pratchett and the book was Shepherd's Crown, you won't believe how much I had to negotiate with my superiors at the Airbase to allow me to take the day's morning shift rather than the night shift just to be able to get my copy by midnight.

Sorry for starting the story so abrupt, but let me introduce myself, I am U.S. Air Force Captain Jack R. Dudley, half-British and half-American, I also worked for NASA as a test pilot for their prototype planes and spacecrafts including a supposedly quiet hypersonic fighter jet which was developed at the request of the Air Force.

Needless to say, I am a huge fan of the late Sir Terry Pratchett, I was reading his books since I was a teen and I fell in love with the Tiffany Aching novels, I mean sometimes I wished I could travel back in time and just give the Young Adult novels to my younger self, I'd be an Air Force Major or maybe even someone working at the Pentagon if I had become much more hard working.

But here I am, an Air Force Captain in a joint-training program in the United Kingdom where I would be flying alongside our British cousins of the Royal Air Force in NATO exercises, as in we'd be running simulated bombing runs where we'll take off from a top secret - sorry, even now I can't tell you where it is! - airbase in the U.K. and end up landing somewhere in Poland after 'striking' a target in the Crimean Peninsula, and then we'll have to haul ass back to the U.K.

And there I was, somehow ending up at the line with a ticket for the midnight release of the last Discworld book, though I can't blame the other ones in line for wondering why a man in a U.S. Air Force uniform was lining up for a Discworld book, I did not have time to change, I came to the bookstore from a formal military ceremony, our base commandant was shoved off to Afghanistan and there was a send-off dinner for him.

Some people asked me how I felt about the book and then some wondered why I was in an Air Force uniform, I simply told them that I was excited for the book and that I was working for the U.S. Air Force, though to be fair there were some others that wore wizard clothes and other cosplaying garb, but then there was one in full diplomatic clothing, or rather a piece of clothing that did not come from Europe.

That one in diplomatic clothing stood right in front of me, in fact he sort of turned and around and saw my uniform and said, "Well, I guess I'm not the only one here that's part of Government."

"Oh, where are you from then?" I asked.

"Philippine Embassy." the man said flatly, "Name's Luis Balroa Quezon."

"Well, um, I am from the U.S. Air Force, I think it's obvious." I replied, "Captain Jack R. Dudley is the name by the way."

When midnight struck, the store opened its doors and we were allowed to get our copies of what would be the last Discworld story written, I did not bother speaking with the others I simply went into the store, got my copy, and had it stamped and signed by the author's good friends who were there on his behalf.

Now this is where the night went straight on weird, I sort of decided to hang about inside the bookstore in order to read through the first ten or so pages of the book, that's when the manager of the bookstore approached me, he looked nervous and somewhat shaken, "May I help you, sir?" I asked.

"I am the manager of this store -"

"Oh I bought this book already, am I not allowed to stay here?" I said, waving my receipt in front of him.

"No, I was asked by people in black suits to tell you to go to my office immediately, they said they're government." said the manager.

I did not blame him for being somewhat nervous, there are two types of government workers; those with and a normal smile, and then there are those without I.D.s and looks as if they're after you and your family.

I patted him on the shoulder, "Don't worry, I'll handle them, I've handled much worse people."

"Follow me." said the manager.

I followed the manager to his office which was well hidden, in fact the door leading to the office was painted the same color and pattern as the wall, and inside that office would be two men in black suits, one of whom instructed the manager to specifically leave the room normally and to not raise any attention.

When the manager was gone and the door was shut, I eyed them hard like how my old drill sergeants stared at us, "I can tell C.I.A spooks when I see one, I worked for the Air Force Intelligence too."

"That is why you're here." said one of them, "Wilson Rob Bodlin, and yes I do work for the C.I.A, this man on the other hand works for the Pentagon."

"Which branch?" I asked.

"Army intelligence, Jason T. Clancy." said the other man.

"So, here I am getting this simple book and now I'm being harassed by the C.I.A, what did I do wrong?" I told them.

"Nothing, in fact it's your interesting record that has gotten the interest of the Joint Committee." said Wilson.

There were chairs in front of us, "May I take a seat?" I asked.

"Go ahead."

We three sat down at the same time, they had the manager's chair while I had the chair in front of the desk, "So, Captain Jack R. Dudley, how much have you worked for NASA?" asked Wilson.

"Nine years, I mean I was accepted into NASA after my service in Iraq, they were planning to work on a Single Stage To Orbit space plane called the Venture Star and I was to be its pilot, well it did flew but not into orbit, in fact it was a near failure due to some complicated systems going wrong." I explained.

"Good, so that's how your name popped up." said Wilson.

"Gentlemen, as much as I love playing 20 questions, I have to return to my base or else." I said.

"Or else what? You're chasing nothing, Captain Dudley." said Wilson as Jason handed me a paper, that paper came from the Pentagon's Joint Chief of Staff and it was a direct order to the new Commandant to release me from his command and to hand me over to the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force.

This was serious then, if I'm not in trouble then it's most likely me being sent off to do some seriously high risk precision strike, I honestly thought at that moment that I was to be sent to bomb a high value target on the recently Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula.

"I'm being relieved as an airman of the Joint U.S.-U.K forces?" I said.

"Yes, kid, you're now working for NASA and you better believe it that you're now an astronaut, but for very urgent reasons which we cannot verbally disclose right now." said Wilson, "We'll be escorting you somewhere, that is when the ride shows up."

"But how will we get out of this office without being spotted?" I asked.

"No, we're the only ones not needed to be spotted, we came in from the back door, you came from the front and you would have to walk out of here as normal, we'll pick up you up." said Wilson, he then pressed his earpiece and nodded, "Right, our ride is here, see you outside."

I left the office as quietly as I could, making sure that no one would suddenly turn their heads towards me and wonder why I came from the manager's office. I left the store as normally as I could and was able to quickly spot the car, made obvious with the passenger window rolled down and with Wilson's face ominously peering out into the London night.

I quickly got into the back and was then treated to some hell of a driving by the Army Intelligence guy, though it was more of someone trying to drive fast but not too fast or else the cops would be after us.

I decided to keep quiet for the trip, in fact these guys did not want to talk at all, and I think none of them would want to even answer the questions I have in my head right now.

We drove on to a eerily looking place called the M.I.6 headquarters, you know the top secret headquarters located somewhere so publicly that it's secrecy was more of an in-joke.

We were allowed in by the guard at the gate and we drove to the underground parking area, "Alright, the helicopter will be here and you'll be flown to an airbase in France where you'll be flying with the President of the United States aboard Air Force One." explained Wilson as we got out of the car.

"Wait, I'll be flying aboard Air Force One!?" I exclaimed.

"If all goes to plan that is, and there will be surprises." said Wilson.

We went up through the floors of M.I.6 headquarters through an elevator, we reached the top most floor that the elevator went to and we climbed a few flights of stairs before reaching the helipad on top where a black helicopter was waiting for us.

We hopped aboard and the helicopter lifted off quickly, that's when I finally got my hands on the first trickle of information about this whole top secret whatever, and oh boy I did not like the truth.

Wilson, who was seating across me, handed me a sheet of paper, it was a simple one page printed report from the guys behind the Rosetta mission, or rather the mission to land a robot on an asteroid, which was under the jurisdiction of the European Space Agency or E.S.A.

The report stated that the Rosetta probe, though not armed with a good telescope like that of Hubble, has nonetheless spotted an unusual 'foreign object' in the orbit around Saturn using spectogram, also known as analyzing the blackness of space through color luminosity, after all anything other than black could easily pop out against the black background of space.

This foreign object was calculated to be at around ten thousand miles in diameter and is heading for a steep orbit towards the sun with its periapsis - or the point before it gets swung out back to the outer planets - somewhere in between Venus and Earth.

It was too far to be a threat to Earth, so why is there interest in this all of a sudden? I ended up answering my own question when Jason handed me a two page document, and oddly enough it had the picture of the mysterious object as taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Hubble Space Telescope could take wonderful high resolution pictures of celestial bodied far away into our galaxy, so a simple target like an asteroid within the Solar System was barely a challenge to Hubble.

The picture, and even up until now I could not forget my initial reaction of seeing the picture, taken by Hubble showed an asteroid awfully shaped a lot like a turtle with four elephants on its shell carrying a flat world, at first I thought I had gone insane but then I looked at the spectogram data and it was not lying; there set against the blackness of space was an object whose colors were mainly green, gray, blue, and a bit of white - caused by the clouds within the atmosphere maybe?

I glared at the other two, they must have been expecting this reaction, Wilson simply smirked and shook his head which had the general message of 'I know, we could not believe it either.'

I sort of entered into a daze of some form, I mean can't you believe it? Possibly a fictional world coming true and in a heartwarming way came after the death of the author, it's as if God had read the Discworld novels and loved it so much that when he took the author away from us he made the fictional world real, how cool is that! If God takes requests, can the Millennium Falcon sort of land outside my family farm in Houston, Texas?

I know why these two don't want to talk, not with the pilot being able to listen into our conversation, the only way to talk amidst the loud noises of the engines and the helicopter blades whirring would be through the headphones and microphones. But I had a lot of questions, questions which could not be answered immediately and it was frustrating.

After a few moments of dead silence, and after staring at the darkness of the English countryside and then the English channel and then the French countryside, we saw a group of lights located far off from the other larger group of lights, the larger group of lights were Paris while the smaller ones were that of the air base.

The helicopter landed near Air Force One, in fact when I looked out the door I saw the large and enigmatic blue plane of the President of the United States, "Alright, it's showtime." said Wilson as he opened the door.

Secret Service officers immediately surrounded us as we got out and hustled us to the mobile staircase and into Air Force One, they told us to sit down in the cabin reserved for the President, it did not look like a normal Boeing 747, it looked more like an office in the air.

We were seated around what looked like an office desk, though it's quite weird to see an actual office desk in an airplane being used as an office desk, "So, where's the commander in chief?"

Wilson shook his head, "Not here, this is nothing more than a decoy, the President is in the White House, safe and secure, however he will be joining in the joint phone conference with NASA and us in a few moments."

"Why did we have to use Air Force One?" I asked.

"This was the only government plane heading to anywhere near Washington D.C, trust me when I say that the findings of our friends in Europe is something we cannot believe, but if it were to be true…" Wilson paused, "What made it real? I mean you yourself know that it was supposed to be fictional, right?"

I nodded, "Yes, the Discworld is supposed to be fictional, but of course couldn't it have been a mistake? Maybe our eyes are being tricked or something."

"Not with the scientists at NASA and the top brass at the Pentagon." said Jason, "They're both considering it as a potential threat, either that or a potential source of interest for the scientific community."

"So why am I here again exactly?" I asked.

"Upon NASA's request, something connected to this potentially hazardous situation." said Wilson.

No one knows what's inside Air Force One to be precise, not even someone from the military, so I can only guess that there may be some control center upstairs handling outbound and inbound communications, either way the next thing we heard was a speaker inside the cabin going off, "We have an incoming video phone call from the White House."

There was a TV screen in the cabin, Wilson stood up and approached it, when he flipped the switch on we saw the face of the President of the United States, sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, as well as that of the Administrator of NASA who was at Cape Canaveral.

I saluted, "Mister President, sir."

"At-ease, Captain." acknowledged the President, "Right so, we've been both woken up by NASA, what is it that you have for us?"

The Administrator of NASA spoke, "Gentlemen, we have a unique situation, nothing like it has been recorded before and we have to make a decision on it right now."

"I have read the briefing, have our friends in Europe double checked these information?" asked the President.

"Yes sir, they are more than confident that it is real, and even our Hubble Telescope says that it is real." said the Administrator, "Captain, the reason why we called you up from Europe is because we are planning to mount a manned mission."

I nearly laughed but I was able to disguise it as a cough, "I'm sorry, you want to mount a manned mission?" I asked.

"I have spoken to my fellow assistant administrators, we've even held a general meeting of all the NASA staff across the country via video link and we have put it to a non-binding vote after a period of debate as to the decision to mount an unmanned and then manned mission." explained the Administrator, "We all agreed that we need to get there when it is closest to Earth."

"With what?" I asked.

"We-…we're trying to contact the senior officers of the United Launch Alliance and SpaceX to be our launch providers." said the Administrator, "However we will also use the Space Launch System, we calculated that we can launch our manned mission by 2020, that's when the Disc should be close enough."

"Sir, it's Election Year next year, I mean even if we agree to commit to this right now…" I sort of faltered, "I mean what if the next President does not like the plan?"

"Then we'll hand it to SpaceX or the U.L.A, either way we will be mounting a mission, period." said the Administrator.

"Sir, what says you?" I asked the President.

"I signed into law enforcing the new plan for NASA in the wake of the Constellation Program, this is precisely why we need to be prepared to explore beyond the Moon." said the President, "However we will need to disperse this information before I sign any Executive order approving this mission."

"Of course, sir, we will be holding a press conference within the next twelve hours and we will be making that announcement." said the Administrator.

To be honest with you, I have serious doubts about this mission, for one we have no rocket or spaceship capable of supporting humans in an interplanetary flight, the Space Launch System is still in development, or so I heard.

"But what if the Discworld's trajectory changes somehow?" I asked, "Like what if it stays within the orbit of Saturn?"

"Then we'll see what we can do about that." said the Administrator.

"Wait, my question was not answered yet, why am I here?" I asked.

"We're making you Mission Commander, you're the few astronauts we had that has had intelligence training as well as on the ground military training on top of the Air Force training." replied the Administrator, "We know that if there is civilization down there…it's like leaping into enemy territory."

I nodded, it's like a reverse alien invasion, we're the aliens, "I understand sir, and it is an honor to be chosen for something like this."

"Yes, oh and your knowledge of these things might help…if it ends up mirroring the books you've read." added the Administrator.

It would be the biggest fanboy/geek fest ever for me, I smirked and said "Well sir, I sure do hope it does."

"We'll keep an eye for anymore data to come from our allies in Europe and around the world, we'll update you two as soon as we receive it." said the Administrator, "That's all that we have, sir."

The President spoke, "Alright then, we'll be waiting for updates, I'll be meeting with senior lawmakers to discuss this plan, I'll try getting Congress to get behind this, thank you and goodbye gentlemen."


	3. Chapter 01 - Lead Up

In the days, months, and even years in the lead up to the mission itself, the best way to describe that five year gap between the preparation and the mission would simply be one word, that word is 'Change' and it came to us like a loud and monstrous freight train.

The first taste the world has gotten of the Discworld was with the press conference conducted by NASA that very night, or rather sometime before six in the morning, Eastern Standard Time.

I was already at a hotel in Washington D.C, we were told to stay there and wait for further orders, to be fair though any man with a family of his own would be wanting to contact his wife and kids by now, just to calm his nerves, well I don't have a family of my own yet or a girlfriend, guess I ended up becoming a bit too busy fighting and flying elsewhere for those soft things.

So in other words, I was alone, I do have friends but they're all abroad, as for my parents and siblings, well they're fine back at our ranch but I did not want to rattle them just yet.

I watched the news conference and quite frankly the world found itself heads over heels with the news of the Disc, some responded with skepticism while most responded with humor and jest, and then there was some fans of the author that thought it was a bad and tasteless joke from NASA, most especially with the fact that the announcement was made after the release of the last book.

The first press conference did not make as much of an impact compared to the other press conferences held by the European Space Agency and the Japanese Space Agency as well as Roscomos (Russian Space Agency) and the Chinese National Space Agency, all of these snowballed into the coordinated international address at the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council by the representatives of the major superpowers with the loudest one being the United States.

Guess what dominated the Presidential Elections? The announcement of the discovery of the Discworld had impacted severely the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, the 2016 Presidential Election was to be decided by whether or not the candidate for the Presidency supported a manned mission or not.

Put it this way, initially before the announcement, the Republicans were about to get a mutli-billionaire businessman as their possible Candidate, meanwhile the Democrats were split between two. Now that the announcement was made and the existence of the Disc became public knowledge, the Republicans ended up with someone who at least supported the idea of going for a manned mission, while the Democrats had a dark horse candidate who had a background in spaceflight before becoming a politician and was throwing his campaign around this Discworld surprise.

Actually, allow me to give a brief summary of the important events in the lead up to the mission itself, year by year.

2015:

By the tail end of the year, the Presidential Elections was down to the Republican Candidate Robert A. Howler and the Democratic Candidate Howard J. Cruz, the campaign was bitterly fought between whether or not we should send a manned mission to the Discworld or not.

SpaceX on the other hand also dominated the news with their successful landing of an orbital booster, something which I think came out of science fiction, in fact plenty of people within the circles of aerospace and astronautics thought it came out of science fiction, but there it was, a Falcon 9 rocket first stage landing back on Earth.

The International Community responded with a discordant voice, it depends on the region where the country came from, however there was at least one unifying call that every nation agreed upon; we have to explore this thing.

2016:

Every month right after New Year's Day was filled with news and speculations as to how NASA could execute this mission, mostly the Space Launch System stole the spotlight and was billed as the rocket that would take us to the Discworld when the launch window comes.

But even with the Space Launch System gaining support, by this time I have not met my crew nor have we begun training, simply because we do not have a rocket as of yet.

SpaceX did two spotlight-stealing things that year, they landed a booster on top of an autonomous landing ship in the middle of the Atlantic, and their CEO presented what could be an answer to our problems; the Big Falcon Rocket, known formally as the Interplanetary Transport Ship.

You know, I did not know much of Elon Musk at the time however what I ended up knowing him after his presentation to the International Astronautics Congress was that he was as bold as the explorers before, that is with a side of craziness and served with money, lots of it.

As for the Elections, the Democratic Candidate won with a landslide similar to Nixon vs McGovern during the 70s, it was a gigantic landslide with every state but one voting for Howard J. Cruz, mainly because he advertised himself as the man that will bring the United States - and humanity - to space.

I did vote for President Cruz, mainly because he was a much better orator than the other guy and he had good plans for the military, society, and for spaceflight, so that's how you get my vote and apparently the vote of 49 States.

To be honest, 2016 was not as Earth shattering as I had expected, but it paved the way for a lot of things, mainly the events of 2017 that had affected the mission itself.

2017:

This was the year the great argument for a spaceship happened, after all now that NASA had a President that advocated sternly for a manned mission, and with an enthusiastic public willing to support such a mission, NASA needed a rocket immediately to be able to come up with a plan, something of a plan.

The Space Launch System was delayed, whereas it was supposed to have its first test flight next year, now it was delayed to 2020, the optimal launch window to begin our coast towards the Disc, and what's worse was that the Space Launch System could be delayed up to 2025 at worst.

Things were looking somewhat grim, or so I have imagined, for NASA and their planners at the Johnson Spaceflight Center at Houston, I can't blame them though, the materials required for the mission as well as the training depends upon the maximum capability of the rocket, as well as the mission execution.

The silver lining came from SpaceX once more, this time with the update to the Interplanetary Transport Ship, now officially known as the Big Falcon Rocket, it was downsized in order to cut potential development costs and to ensure a first flight by 2020 or earlier.

This sealed the deal for NASA, thankfully for me because I found myself drooling at the new video presentation by SpaceX's CEO showcasing the possibility of using a spacecraft - which by the way was wider than the second stage of a Saturn V and nearly as wide as the large first stage - to transport people halfway across the world in thirty minutes or less, and I knew that the B.F.R has got to be my ship for the mission.

On Christmas Day 2017 I was back at my family ranch, for the years I've been waiting for at least one solid plan to come out of NASA so that I can meet my crew and begin training with them, I found myself constantly going from my family farm to the Lyndon B. Johnson Center for Manned Spaceflight nearby, or being shipped to Cape Canaveral to meet with senior NASA officials.

But then while I was having dinner with my parents and my sister as well as her boyfriend - interestingly enough he decided to spend Christmas with us instead of his own family, well he did came from Washington State - the phone call came from the Director of the Houston complex NASA has.

I remembered excusing myself from the table and answering the phone upstairs, "Captain Jack Dudley?" asked the Director, "This is the Director of the Center for Manned Spaceflight, we have good news for you."

"What now, a new proposal or a change?" I asked somewhat sternly, my years has been wasted with bureaucracy, always having to attend very pointless meetings, always having to be called up by the State House Reps. And the Senators asking if I can attend a House or Senate committee meeting.

"No, we have a confirmed spaceship and we are coming up with a solid plan, your training begins next year on February, you'll be meeting your crew by January." said the Director.

I leaped in my room and said, "Yes, finally, thank you sir."

"Thank you too, Captain, it seems that we need someone like you with your level of enthusiasm, we'll keep in touch." said the Director before he hung up.

When I went back to the table, I told the news to my parents, sister, and guests, I was kind of surprised to see my older sister crying and embracing me, she had always been a big softie, there is only the two of us and we were there for each other when our parents were too busy with either the farm or other problems in life.

But I had my mind set already, I was destined for out there, for space, for the Discworld.

It is at this point where I can stop summarizing the events broadly, mainly because of how jam packed 2018 became, I was phoned up on January 24 and was told to head over to Johnson Space Center to meet my crew and for a general briefing on the mission.

I felt excited to meet my crew, I wonder who else made the cut based on their experience and history alone, I guess also based on their attitude and general disposition to their superiors and to the idea of going up there.

When I entered the office where we were told the meeting was to be held, I spotted immediately my crew, my new colleagues who I would be working with from now until splashdown sometime after 2021 or 2022 and maybe even beyond.

The one to have caught my attention first would be the big eyed redhead sitting right beside an empty chair, we're all mostly around our early to mid-thirties but she looked like in her mid-twenties, she had this striking pair of eyes which was why I described her as 'big eyed'.

She seemed to have spotted me looking at her a bit longer than usual, "I'm Valentina Josephine Von Braun."

I did a double take, "Related to THE Wernher Von Braun?"

"Distant relative." she smiled, "Big fan of him are you?"

I nodded, "Yeah, of course!"

"Captain, do please take a seat, you'll get to meet your crew in a while." said who I guess was the Director of this facility.

I sat beside the rocket baroness, I mean Wernher Von Braun was related to royalty, too bad it became useless when the Nazis came to power, so I tend to call Valentina rocket baroness.

"Right, so welcome to our first meeting as a team, the agenda for today is simple; get to know each other, get to know the rocket, and then get to know the mission, training begins tomorrow." explained the Director, "So now we'll allow for each one of you to sort of give your credentials to your Captain here, if you know what I mean."

There were about eight other astronauts so that means that we'll be a part of nine when we execute the mission, but the whole time I was distracted by Valentina Von Braun, she looked like a vampire to be honest, I mean she had a fair complexion, a thin build, and eyes that…just captivated anyone.

But I was able to get the important bits from the others; there was James Thompson, Ares Bacon, John Howell - who formed EVA Lander Team 01, Jeb Baxter, Bill Banks, and Bob Howell - a.k.a EVA Team 02, and then finally there was Valentina Von Braun and Jerry Probst - who would join me as the flexible crew, that is it's either we'll be EVA Team Alpha (as in first to go down there) or the permanent orbital crew to monitor and maintain the spacecraft.

Once we've shook hands and introduced one another, though we only had time to give each other our names as well as our position; apparently Valentina was our spacecraft pilot, James was to be Capsule 01 Commander, Ares was Mission Specialist for Capsule 01, John was the Capsule 01 pilot, Bob was Capsule 02 Commander, Bill was Mission Specialist, and Jeb was the pilot, oh and Jerry Probst was our -it, he was our Chief Engineer.

After we've done all that, the Director took over once more and ordered for the lights to be dimmed, a projector was switched on as the lights were switched off, on the screen was an illustration of our spacecraft.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Big Falcon Rocket, call sign The Falcon." said the Director with pride, "Our buddies at SpaceX had given us a special variant of their planned B.F.R which we were allowed to modify."

The next slide focused on the Big Falcon Spaceship or B.F.S, also known as the upper stage, whereas the booster stage was called Big Falcon Booster or B.F.B. Apparently, NASA had been allowed to do whatever they want with the design of The Falcon and they really did what they wanted alright.

SpaceX is first and foremost a commercial company, and as such their B.F.R was meant to transport up to a hundred people to Mars in comfort, meaning no more being squeezed into a bucket seat with the other two astronauts inside a Russian capsule, you get a cabin and a bathroom with hot water, that is basically luxury.

On top of the three 'floors' of cabins would be a general common area for the inhabitants of the spacecraft, this is where they could meet, talk, play games, and all those sorts of things, meanwhile below the cabins would be the cargo hold.

Now, NASA's modified B.F.R had removed nearly all the cabins, and only left us with the top ring of cabins as well as the common area and the Bridge which was hidden in the 'nose cone' area of the spacecraft.

"Wait, what's with the big space?" I asked, the B.F.S had the same internal volume as the passenger cabins of the freaking A380 super jumbo jet, that's a lot of space dedicated to cargo.

"That would be where Dragon One and Dragon Two as well as Dreamer would be placed, those three would be your auxiliary crafts, now even though SpaceX has told us that the B.F.S is mean to enter the atmosphere and take off, we are not directly risking the spacecraft and instead opted for a 'carrier' approach to the mission, where The Falcon will be the mothership and the other three would be the actual landing capsules." explained the Director before adding, "The Dreamer is a fully autonomous mini-shuttle that can be piloted from here in Houston just in case if there's a any need for a rescue."

Dragon One and Two were SpaceX Dragon capsules, and trust me when I say that they make the Apollo capsule look like a rowboat compared to a state of the art Navy Destroyer, the Dragon was designed to be able to land and take off from Mars without all the fuss with a Service Module, plus it can hold five people.

The Dreamer was a cross between the Venture Star and the Delta Clipper Experimental (DC-X) rocket, both of which were attempts at a Single Stage To Orbit spacecraft - think Science Fiction rockets, the types that does not have to drop any of their fuel tanks to save weight and gain a higher thrust to weight ratio - the Dreamer was meant to be our emergency rescue craft if somehow either of the Dragons were knocked out of action.

As for the propulsion of The Falcon, the four space Raptor engines and three atmospheric Raptor engines were replaced with four similarly powerful Nuclear engines while the atmospheric engines were left untouched.

"Nuclear engines?" asked Jerry.

The Director then sighed, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry to say it like this but the Disc has been very erratic with its orbital patterns, it's as if…it's a big turtle swimming in an ocean."

"So how far away is it?" asked Valentina.

"It's as far as the asteroid belt, however we're hoping that it would be near us upon launch day, however we've plotted a worst case scenario where the Disc would somehow return to around the orbit of Saturn, I know, it is casually breaking our laws of physics." explained the Director, "So, we took that into consideration."

"Well, it's going to be further than 2001 then." I said, Valentina slapped my arm playfully and laughed.

"I'm not going to be killed by HAL 9000, Captain." she smirked.

"Yes, it is going to be further than what anyone has imagined, possibly." said the Director, "This is a very important mission, and we would not want to lose you at all."

The Director wrapped up his briefing with the mission procedure, we would launch on June 1 2020 from Pad-39 A, aka the Apollo 11 launch pad, and then we'll dock with the I.S.S for supplies before being sent off to a Trans-planetary burn with some gravity assist from Earth to save fuel.

From there onwards, it would be an approximately two to three year coasting period to the distance of Saturn, where the Disc was floating nearby. We will then proceed with our slow-down burn in order to be captured by the Disc's orbit, and then either EVA 01 or EVA Alpha would be the first to set foot on the surface.

I do not know if we have to play rock, paper and scissors for that honor between my team and Ares', but I'm sure that it would be a point of contention, though I hope that it would not be the case.

We wrapped our first meeting by being given the marching orders for tomorrow; we were to report at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Astronauts' training facility, and from there on we would be training with our respective teams.

After that first day of meeting my team and throughout the training period, well I can't really find a way to write much about them without inciting a grave injustice to our relationship, I mean I don't think I could ever put into words the camaraderie we built during training.

For those who are curious as to how we trained, since I already had a background in Intelligence as well as with being an astronaut, I did not have to train much compared with the others, their backgrounds are mostly military with the exception of Ares and Bill, who were technically civilian scientists who specialized in geophysics, in other words, the studies of how the planets work on a geological level.

We were all given basic Intelligence and anti-interrogation techniques, I felt sorry for the others who did not have any background in these things, mainly because those who did have experience training and working in the military were mostly taught how to fight, maybe fix things, and how to follow orders, I don't think the idea of being stranded hundreds of miles inside enemy territory was even planted on their heads as a feasible and probable situation which they could find themselves in.

Luckily my team did have some form of Intelligence training during our own time in our respective services, Jerry was from the Air Force as the guy in charge of keeping the planes flying, meanwhile Valentina…oh boy Valentina was a colorful character on her own.

She did three things well, flying, fighting…and well I can't really write the third 'F' at all, but let's just say that she had a long history of relationships, she reminded me of those stereotypical hot blooded young ones, unsurprisingly enough she flew the trainer craft like an F-16 fighter jet, somehow, which was a given since she graduated from Navy Weapons School. (Yes, I felt envious of her, I only managed to pass Air Force Weapons School)

As for Jerry, he is human but sometimes I like to think of him as a robot, he was able to nail down every possible problem during the simulations with nothing more than duct tape and electrical wiring and some plies, this guy was McGyver and I am sure of that, NASA even gave him an Apollo 13 scenario and somehow he was able to perform a lunar landing with the oxygen tank blown out.

During the early days of our training, I think the most memorable moment would be when the news broke that SpaceX had just tested the most powerful operational rocket at that time, that being the Falcon Heavy, by shooting a car - yes, a car - out into a Martian orbit to the tune of David Bowie's Life On Mars.

But the other exciting thing after the Falcon Heavy would be the press conference where their CEO, Elon Musk, announced their work on the Big Falcon Rocket, mainly with the development of the one-off ship unit called 'The Falcon' for NASA, for our mission, and also the B.F.R was to be uprated, going from 106 meters tall and 9 meters wide to about a whopping 122 meters tall and 10 meters wide, that makes it taller and wider than Saturn V or the Block 2 SLS.

It's quite hard to comprehend it at the time but now that I look back at it, a hundred years ago - more or less - we couldn't even get more than four or five people off the ground, but then we ended up shooting a car out into outer space for 'silly' a hundred and seventeen or eighteen years after the Wright Brothers' first flight of the first airplane.

And fifty years ago, precisely fifty years before the first test flight of the B.F.S, we launched three people to the Moon on a tall rocket that - up until the point of the launch of our mission - was the most successful and powerful rocket with zero failures, zero deaths, and being the only rocket to have conducted a beyond Low Earth Orbit mission.

Now, the B.F.R, or shall I say The Falcon, in all its glory with its large illustration of a Falcon holding a turtle in its claws with the flags of the world in its beaks and with the motto 'Those who are about to die don't want to' in Latin (Yes, someone was a huge fan of Discworld within the ranks of NASA or SpaceX) painted on the sides of the ship where the common area was, and of course there was the American flag, the U.N. Flag, and the 'X' variant logo of SpaceX painted on the dorsal-aft of the craft, this ship made the Saturn V look tiny in terms of width and capabilities.

Another thing about The Falcon was that it was the first rocket to look like those old rockets designed by the likes of Jules Verne, the guy who thought it would be a good idea to shoot humans into the moon with a big gun, the concept - the idea - of a bullet shaped spacecraft was considered outlandish due to its height, weight, and impracticality, but The Falcon looked exactly like a bullet with stubby delta wings.

But if there is one thing, at least one thing, that no one could have guessed, regardless if its from an optimist or a pessimist, would be how - during the preparations for our mission - there would still be an argument between the CEOs of the rival companies as to how they could integrate their technology with The Falcon.

As the Mission Commander, when I was not in training - or rather when it was decided that I did not need anymore training for the meantime until a wooden mockup of the rocket was built - I was pulled into these hotly contested meetings which occurred pretty much for the entirety of 2018, they are quite childish in my opinion.

But that was not the worst of them all, there were other sudden arguments like having to change our all-American roster into a multi-national one, I would love a multi-national roster in order to represent humanity, the problem was less of representation and more of quality.

This caused a new and messy space race, it was pretty much a free-for-all between NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origins, United Launch Alliance, the Chinese, the Russians - even though they 'gave up' competing with SpaceX sometime around April - and even India

The American Space-Launch Civil War (my own terminology) was caused by companies demanding that their technology be used aboard The Falcon and not just exclusively SpaceX and NASA made stuff, meanwhile the International Space Race was caused by NASA refusing to admit astronauts from other countries.

China wanted to use their upcoming Long March 9 rocket to build an interplanetary craft to either beat us there or be the second people there, Europe, Russia, and India wanted to do the same thing however they were more interested in being the first to launch a reconnaissance orbiter and lander.

Actually there should be a reconnaissance orbiter launch by the end of 2018, and as far as we knew at the time, everyone ended up launching their own reconnaissance orbiter satellites during the month of December, with NASA being forced to launch a light weight satellite to the Disc on top of - surprisingly enough - the Space Launch System rocket, but a very weak version of it, something that would not and could not have been able to bring us to the Disc.

By the first quarter of 2019, we finally got the mock up of The Falcon that was promised, only that it was not the mock up but a boilerplate model, or the actual spaceship without the engines and life support systems, and it was not a hollow object, it was the real deal.

The last year of our training focused less on the ground activities - we covered most of that during 2018 - and more on orbital activities such as servicing the ship or other potential emergencies, thank god The Falcon had a shelter for solar storms.

The final stretch of our training proper was during late 2019 when we were put through every aspect of the mission, including best case and worst case scenarios, and thankfully we all passed with flying colors, and I remembered addressing my crew by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is it." during the debriefing.


	4. Chapter 02 - The Falcon

I remembered the two days before the launch itself, when we were brought to Cape Canaveral for what would probably our last view of the Cape before having to suit up and prepare, and the first thing we saw was this ginormous rocket being rolled out horizontally to the launchpad.

"Is that really The Falcon?" asked Bill.

"You bet." said Jerry.

She was a beauty, this Falcon spacecraft, it was futuristic compared to the last super heavy lift rocket launched from this facility; the Space Launch System. I smiled and nodded, "This is going to be a fun ride."

"You bet your boots that it would be." Valentina smiled.

We were standing at one of the checkpoint gates set up by the 45th Space Wing of the U.S. Air Force, waiting for a van that had the NASA logo on it to come pick us up and bring us to the preparation complex just outside the launchpad.

The van did show up shortly after we arrived, it was flanked by security vehicles owned and maintained by SpaceX, we hopped aboard the van and as we being driven along a long and snaking stretch of road we heard a loud alarm noise being sounded all across the launchpad complex.

A workman from around that area that was in the van with us cared to explain, "That's the alarm, they're about to raise the vehicle vertically."

As we got closer to the complex, we saw The Falcon and its carrier crawler gently rose from the ground, although it was quite a slow process since they were raising a rocket that is as long as the Saturn V like how a trapdoor would be opened, it was pretty obvious why they should take it slow and steady.

We did not have time to hang around and watch the beast slowly rise from the ground, we had to give our final press conference to the media shortly before the last 24 hours until lift off, it was sort of traditional I guess given that it was done with the Apollo astronauts and the Space Shuttle astronauts, and I also guess the Mercury and Gemini astronauts as well.

The Administrator of NASA met us at the back entrance of the complex, the media of the world was at the front entrance hall, particularly just in front and beside of the big Saturn V museum piece inside the visitor's complex. "Good morning to you ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for your press conference?" he asked.

I nodded, "Yes sir, I think we are ready."

"Just be nice to them, and don't go into the too technical things alright?" said the Administrator before patting me on the back and adding "Let's go."

Usually, NASA had these small press conference rooms within Cape Canaveral like the ones used in the Falcon Heavy test flight or the S.L.S Disc 01 mission, but they decided to hold the final press conference at the Saturn V hall, where - yes - there is an entire Saturn V laid horizontally in the hall.

We were escorted from one of the back rooms and into a hallway leading into the Saturn V hall at the visitors' complex, we noticed that the entire hall has been decked out to the brim with all sorts of flags and logos.

In normal days, there would be banners with the logos of the Apollo missions hanging from the ceiling along the length of the Saturn V, now it was joined by the flags of all nations - friend and enemy of the United States alike - which lined the walls of the hall.

As we were presented by the moderator, we were greeted with cheers and applause by the members of the press, we were and have always been branded by the media as heroes of humanity throughout the lead up to the mission, well to be honest the real heroes are those that made Washington D.C agree to this mission, and of course those that have worked tirelessly round the clock to make the systems work.

As we sat down along the long table on the stage, I tried counting the number of press logos that I could see either on the cameras or on the notebooks of the journalists, there are a lot of news companies from around the world sitting in that hall, eager to ask us questions.

The press conference proper began with a general outline of the mission itself as well as with the issue of the positioning of the Disc, mainly how for the past few months it has been erratic somewhat, too erratic for human science to keep track of.

Once the general statements and outline of the mission were given by the Administrator of NASA, the floor was opened for questions and they were as eager as a bunch of fishes in a pod being fed, we were going to be the one and only major international headlines for the next few days.

Most of the questions were about how we felt about the mission, how we trained, how hard training was, but my most favourite question has got to be, "Has NASA taken into consideration the possibility that the Discworld…well is exactly like in the books, I mean on the ground in terms of politics and important people?"

That was a good question, I was about to answer that when the Administrator butted in, "The Department of Defense has taken that into consideration, and we too at NASA has taken that idea into consideration, and as such the astronauts would be bringing tools of defense with them."

'Tools of defense' would refer to the weapons cache that we would be bringing; assault rifles, personal defense pistols, and I do believe a rocket launcher, but only I have the knowledge of the cache, the others were given weapons training but were told that it was part of 'Intelligence' training.

I raised my hand and said, "Well, I am a huge fan of Discworld and I have read all the books…and also I came first place in a pub quiz on Discworld during my stay in Britain, and I think NASA has chosen the best Mission Commander for the job."

From that point onward, the Discworld related questions just kept flying towards me, mainly from the Tweets by reputable journalists that were accredited by the NASA Public Affairs Office as part of their webcast of the press conference, here are some questions that I remembered answering;

'What happens if you meet (enter fictional character here)?' my answer sort of depended on which character, I would gleefully meet Rincewind, Twoflower, punch out Carcer and/or Teatime, maybe send a clacks message to a random person, hopefully not run into the Nac Mac Feegles without Tiffany Aching - aka their Big Wee Hag - around them, and - I know this would be improbable if my theory that the moment we land there would be way after the last book - hopefully get to meet Esmerelda Granny Weatherwax, but for certain I would like to meet Queen Magrat and the other members of the Lancre Coven.

I remembered how lost the NASA Administrator and the moderator looked, I ended up riding the press conference like a stallion, that is after taking away control of the stallion from the moderator, mainly because with every answer - say, to the question about running into Tiffany Aching in which I answered 'I would really love to meet her, mainly because I think she's the best character around' - it would be followed up by something like 'Would you introduce yourself with your true identity or do you have a cover story' or 'Wouldn't she spot the spacesuit?'

You get the idea, the press conference was mostly about the Discworld and how we were to handle it, and in the end the moderator was forced to cut short the meeting with the press, it felt as if it could have gone for the whole night and maybe until lift off or even beyond it.

As we left the stage, Valentina patted me on the back and said "Well, and I think this is the first time I'm saying this, thank God we have a nerd in charge."

"Geek, it's geek, I'm not that of a nerd." I replied.

"Well at least you're captain." said Ares.

I simply shrugged and said, "Well I guess it's all good timing, that's all."

We slept early that night, because by T-minus-12 hours we should be up early and ready for our breakfast together before being suited and up in our spacesuits, which I have to say was futuristic looking, far more futuristic looking than we've expected.

We did train with mockups of the spacesuits, it was more of just the shell and without all the gizmos that came with the spacesuit, but after we had our solemn breakfast and as we were being suited up, we just can't stop eyeing and tinkering with the touchscreen and the soft buttons and simply awe at how futuristic our suits looked.

For starters, these spacesuits got rid of the comical fishbowl helmet in exchange for a proper helmet that had a touch screen visor, so we can have a heads-up-display that showed our physical status as detected by the sensors of the suit, as well as access the ship's systems.

It also got rid of the big bulky valves and swapped them with smaller and stronger valves for the oxygen tanks, and the gloves were lighter, the whole suit was lighter, and if we looked ourselves at a mirror we looked like we came from the future.

By T-minus-3 hours or so, we were escorted to the NASA bus that would take us to the launchpad proper, so that means we did the iconic walk down the hall outside and into the bus where the media was taking pictures of us and some were shouting 'Good luck' or 'Godspeed' and someone shouted at Valentina 'I saw your Instagram posts, you're really adventurous.' to which she sort of stopped, showed a thumb and winked.

"What the hell did he mean by that?" Jerry asked as we sat down in the bus.

"I-…posted pictures of my trek around the world before I was brought into this." said Valentina, "Most of them were with my old boyfriends before they…broke up with me."

She reminded me of a young Nanny Ogg somehow, I don't know, but somehow I was compelled to say something, "Well, tell them that they lost the girl that went further than any human being could ever have."

She smirked and added, "Because I fell into your arms?"

"What?" my cheeks reddened somewhat inside that helmet.

"Oh nothing." she giggled.

It was around four in the morning, Eastern Standard Time, as we drove to the launchpad itself, we all noticed that the tower was different from the big red structure used in the Apollo missions, or the big gray structure used in the Space Shuttle missions,

The sharp-eyed Jerry spotted the differences and was quick to mention them, "It's kind of funny how the launch tower is just a big upside down 'L' shaped crane, and-…do you think they can pull it off?"

"Which one?" I asked.

"The bit where the booster lands back on the launchpad and gets refueled as the refueling B.F.S gets loaded on top?" he said

I had doubts that they could do it, this is the first time they're pulling it off since the B.F.R Test Flight was executed with no orbital refueling, but then again they landed a booster in 2015, landed a booster in the middle of the ocean in 2016, launched a car into space in 2018, landed the booster on the launchpad during the Test Flight earlier this year, I am sure they can pull it off but I still had my doubts.

"I think they can do it, or we'll fail horribly." I said.

As we got out of the bus, and with the sun coming up on the horizon, we spotted the Tanker B.F.S sitting next to the launchpad, I sure do hope they can get the whole system to work, most especially on this day, on this mission where there could be no failure.

The new launch tower had an elevator that looked like a proper office elevator instead of the rickity thing I was shoved inside in order to board the Space Shuttle during one of my training missions as part of the emergency rescue shuttle, dubbed STS 300, during the last few missions of the Space Shuttle after the Columbia disaster, oh and it also had elevator music.

When we reached the top, which was heralded by the most stereotypical 'ping' noise of any elevator, we saw the large boarding arm which led into The Falcon and it looked a lot like those in airports, it was fully sealed and the not a single simple grate floor to be seen.

Even though we've gone through the boilerplate of The Falcon before it was placed on top of the booster, we were still unable to contain our excitement at seeing the interior of The Falcon, we entered through the large payload airlock door which also served as the crew and cargo ingress for the tower, and also I guess this is where the passengers would give their heavy check-in baggage to loaders that would assist them in stowing it somewhere in the cargo bay, that is once the Earth-to-Earth concept becomes real.

Within the payload bay we saw a crane folded up as well as a circular door leading into a tube that went up and it had a ladder inside, we went through the circular door and climbed up the ladder inside the tube, we found ourselves climbing through the hollowed out cabin area which we saw Dragons One and Two and the Dreamer, as well as a bunch of other surface instruments and cargo boxes, in storage.

We then climbed through the single ring of cabins meant for us as well as through the two decks of common areas where we saw the recreational stuff like exercising machines, the food area, and the coffee machine - because we'll be needing a good cup of coffee in the morning, every morning, we did not have to worry about coffee beans, potatoes, corns, and food that you can grow, because within that one ring of cabins would be a hydroponics farm.

We finally reached the so called 'bridge' which was located within the nose area of The Falcon, and I must say that it really looked like a bridge from Star Trek, there was a single pilot's chair at the front, an elevated Captain's chair in the middle, four chairs at the back, two on each side with each chair sitting in front of a touch screen monitor.

I was seated on the center chair, Valentina was at the pilot's chair, Jerry was at the Engineer's console, Ares and Bill manned the sensors, Bob, Jeb, James, and John were seated inside the cabins.

The crew only occupied three cabins, we sort of agreed to allow Valentina to have her own cabin for her privacy's sake even though she said she was used to living with boys while in the Navy aerial wing, but I insisted because I thought it was a gentlemanly thing to do…I don't know, maybe I am having a bit of feelings for her, I know it's unprofessional but we're all human here (except I have suspicions of Jerry of being a robot.)

Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Ares had Cabin 01, Jerry, John and I had our own cabin, and I remembered telling them through the communications as we were being secured in the bridge by NASA personnel, 'No stealing of the top bunks while your cabin mates are gone, alright?' and it got laughter from those in the cabins.

Once we were strapped in, all we had to do was wait for the terminal count, that's it, but even though it sounded simple, it's what's inside our heads that made it complicated, I mean we all had to go through our duties and what we were supposed to do within the next few moments.

I saw Valentina chair flying, by that I mean her hands were moving as if she was moving the joystick and pressing the buttons all the while her eyes were shut, as for the others, I could hear them thinking loudly of their jobs within the whole mission.

We also had to brace ourselves with the fact that this is going to be a long ride, I mean the other crew members left behind children and wives, I think only Valentina and I were bachelorette and bachelor, the others had left behind things no one could think leaving behind.

I mean I left behind my sister, and while she was older than me and was about to be married, she still cared for me as if she was sixteen and I was nine, and our parents were going through divorce, that is until they sort of ended up reconciling instead…mainly because my sister threatened to run away with me in tow.

It was a difficult and heartless thing to do, but we had to put aside our emotions and our humanity for awhile, but at least these moments of going through the mission and trying not to think our families were taken over by chatter from Mission Control.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Houston - Flight, it's T-minus-one hour and they've begun to fill up the tanks with fuel." chirped the Flight Director, "Are you all good?"

"We're good, Flight." I said.

"This is CAPCOM, can you hear me?"

"We copy Capsule Communication." I said.

Our visors which had a touchscreen on it showed us all the information we needed to know, it had the countdown timer as well as the stage we're currently in along with the upcoming stage and when.

Around T-minus-thirty minutes, out visor screens showed the feed of the live stream of the launch on a small 'window' and we could hear the cheers of the SpaceX team at Hawthorne, as well at the more somber faces of the ground crew at Houston and at the Kennedy Firing Room.

"This is Houston - Flight, you can lower the volume of the live stream you're receiving in order to hear us clearly." reminded the Flight Director.

I lowered the volume of my screen, but just enough so that I could still hear the commentators and the cheers and reactions of those at Hawthorne.

"This is Houston - CAPCOM, we would just like to tell you that your live stream is being viewed by a billion and a half people right now, you're the biggest event ever to happen as far as the Internet is concerned."

"Thanks CAPCOM." I replied.

He did not have to tell us that, the live pictures of the viewing stand at Kennedy Space Center - with the flag of all nations flying high equally - was chock full of V.V.V. (Very, Very, VERY Important Persons), we're talking about the President of the United States, the Vice President, his entire Cabinet, at least one representative per State, the ambassadors of other countries, and even the Pope was there - yes, the guy wearing all white and could be spotted easily among the sea of black and office colors at the viewing stand.

I heard Valentina sigh, "Great, I think my ex-boyfriend was interviewed on CBS News."

"How did you know that?" I asked.

"This ship has WiFi and these visors are basically smartphones, I went through the CBS live stream and I saw that smirky bastard on screen!" growled Valentina.

"Hey, come on, let's keep it professional, alright?" interjected the Flight Director, or rather it sounded as if he was scolding her.

"Sorry, Flight." said Valentina.

The moment of glory came, the very moment that everyone has been waiting for a long time, we heard the Flight Director announce 'We're now proceeding for terminal count' and then the final ten seconds were counted down.

The Falcon lifted off with more power than any rocket built by humankind, it had so much power that it felt way worse than what we've trained for at the simulator, this was not just a rocket, this is what a rocket shaped freight train would look and feel like.

I heard Valentina say 'Yipee!' through the communication lines, while the other crew were mostly quite, that's when we heard 'Vehicle is now at Max-Q' from someone at Hawthorne, SpaceX headquarters.

When staging came, it was like being hit by a car or something, it felt like a strong 'WHAM', and before we knew it we were now using nuclear engines, those highly dangerous weapons of mass environmental destruction spewing tons of radiation in its wake, harmless in space but a war crime in the atmosphere.

After a few moments, we felt the engines cutout, "Alright, we're now in orbit!" said Valentina excitedly.

"All systems nominal, Captain." reported Jerry.

"This is Houston - Flight, you're now clear to leave your seats, the autopilot will guide you to the International Space Station to receive some scientific experiments."

"Houston, how about our tanker?" asked Jerry.

"The booster has landed on the pad, successfully, and the tanker will be off in T-minus-three hours from now and rendezvous an hour after lift off, you're twelve hours away from the International Space Station, you'll get refueled first." said Flight Director.

I immediately accessed my visor screen and replayed the part of the livestream where the booster landed, we lost Internet connection during liftoff. I was awestruck, no I cannot believe what I just saw, the Big Falcon Booster was bigger than the First Stage and Second Stage of the Saturn V, and yet it could land itself back on its own launchpad!

On normal B.F.S missions, or so we were told, it would take four to five tankers to completely refuel one B.F.S for an interplanetary mission, however our efficient nuclear engines meant that we only ended up consuming a few pounds or liters of fuel in achieving our orbit.

We unbuckled ourselves from our seats and decided to explore the ship to our hearts' desire, I only floated to the main common area before finding myself glued to the large window at the top common area where the Earth, in full splendor and beauty, showed itself.

I removed my helmet and held it with one hand as I stared at the Earth, that is until I was distracted by Jerry, "You know, it's something this ship."

"I know." I said.

"Captain, I love her, this ship." he added, "Ten meters wide, fifty or so meters tall, powered by Methane, this is humanity's first spaceship."

"We all do, we all do, this is humanity's first spaceship and I am its Captain, it's an honor to be honest." I smiled.

The first exciting event to happen would be the rendezvous with the tanker B.F.S, we were told to man our stations and prepare to do whatever is needed when it's needed, mainly when something deviates from the plans and we have to intervene.

Somehow the rendezvous and the refueling went well, as in we did not feel a thing, there was nothing dramatic or anything, Jerry simply saw the fuel meter on his screen rise to 100%, and then we heard the 'clonk' and a hiss sound as the tanker undocked and flew back.

"Well, that was…boring." said Valentina.

"Thank God it's boring!" exclaimed Jerry.

In between the refueling and the docking with the I.S.S, I decided to get some sleep in my cabin, in fact some of us ended up falling asleep at our stations anyway, it has been a very busy day and it's just beginning, might as well get sleep whenever we can.

We were awakened by Flight Director who announced, "This is Houston - Flight, I know you're all sleepy but we have a job to do, you're now close to the International Space Station, prepare to assist in docking.

As I floated back to the bridge, I saw the International Space Station on the large windows of the common area, and I must say that The Falcon looked more like a space station than the International Space Station, we dwarfed the greatest piece of infrastructure of humanity in space, it was like trying to dock a modern cargo ship at a Victorian era harbor, much like how - or so I heard - the first giant ships were barely able to dock at the old harbors that some of the captains just decided to receive people and cargo out at sea by having the aforementioned stuff ferried to them by small rowboats.

Sadly we can't just sit there in the vicinity of the I.S.S and tell them to ship those things to us, we had to dock. We have an autopilot computer guiding us through the whole thing, though I had to remind Valentina not to switch it off and dock the ship by hand, because she was tempted to do so.

The docking procedure took a grueling five hours to execute, mainly because if you have two objects - each going at 7500 meters per second - trying to dock with one another, you better be sure that you take each foot slowly and steadily, unless if you'd want to see how something as big as a Jumbo Jet striking the International Space Station would look like.

After those hours of slowly crawling closer to the airlock, we heard the confirmation through a rather surprised and excited voice in the communication lines, "Falcon, this is the Commander of the International Space Station, you're no Soyuz or Dragon, you're a Big Falcon Ship! We felt the station shake a little as you docked."

"I could have docked this thing flawlessly." Valentina chided the autopilot.

I accessed my communication controls on my wrist touchscreen, "Cabin crew, all hands on deck, prepare to receive and properly secure experiments from the Space Station." I then received a barrage of 'Ayes' from the crew hanging around in the common area and cabins.

Actually I was curious as to what were the experiments, so I decided to float down to the cargo area, right through the secured pressurized tube - the un-pressurized vehicle bay area was basically the cargo area of the Shuttle but bigger, way bigger - and into the payload receiving area/cargo area.

I saw Bob and James gently guiding a gray box nearly the size of a coffin, "What is that?" I asked.

"Samples of seeds, this would go inside our Hydroponics Farm." said Bob, "Oh and the other two, Jeb and John are bringing down the boxes of petridishes."

"What kind of things are we bringing into our ship?" I asked.

"Nothing much, just some biological stuff…and the bubonic plague." said James.

I did a double take, "The Bubonic Plague!?"

James smiled and laughed, "Just kidding, though we are bringing some harmless bacteria in those petridishes, it's all secured though."

I breathed a sigh of relief, no one has done something as stupid as bringing a highly infectious bacteria into space, although I sort of wondered how the bacteria would act, "Anyhow, what else?"

James and Bob floated aside as Jeb and John came through with the boxes of petridishes, "Where are we supposed to put these?"

"There, just tie it down there." I pointed to an empty space and said that out loud quickly, harmless or not I do not want bacteria in the living area, "James, Bob, go get the seeds into the farm." I added.

I floated aside to give some space for the big box of seeds to be brought through the pressurized tube and into the farm, I then waited for the other two to secure the boxes, "Anything else?" I asked.

"Nope, Captain, we're secured, we're good." said Jeb.

We floated back to the upper areas, where I found Bob and James sort of hanging around, waiting for orders at the common area. "Gentlemen, you better bunker down, we'll be executing our Trans-planetary burn in a few moments after we've undocked." I reminded them before floating back to the bridge.

Once I reached the bridge, the crew were all in their positions and we were ready to be on our way. "This is The Falcon, I.S.S, thanks for the cargo, we'll be undocking."

We listened for Jerry's callouts and waited for the one we've been waiting for, "Their airlock is secured and so as ours, we're now undocking."

Valentina executed the maneuvers to safely put some distance between us and the space station, she handled it better than the autopilot to be honest, or maybe it's just me.

"This is Houston - Flight, we're conducting a go/no-go poll for Trans-Planetary Injection burn as of this moment, we're waiting for the Flight Controllers to report all 'go', we'll give you the signal."

We had to wait for about half an hour until the Flight Director spoke again, "This is Houston - Flight, you're go for T.P.I burn, the autopilot will bring you through the burn."

What's interesting about the nuclear engines we have for use in space would be how they are efficient and have high thrust, equal to that of the standard Raptor Vacuum Engines, which was only a stuff of fantasy during the days of the Apollo program where the experimental nuclear engine, the NERVA, had high efficiency ratings but very low thrust, of course the Apollo program was canceled before the NERVA engine could be improved or implemented.

The burn felt gentle, like as if we were driving a car at normal road speeds along a smooth road, in fact we were quite surprised to hear Valentina announce, "Engine cut off, we're now on our way."

"This is Houston - Flight, as what we've briefed, you would be flying past Venus and Mars before heading to the Disc, travel time would be about a year and two months, we'll keep you company." said the Flight Director with a bit of jest at the end.

"Oh it will be a long trip." said Jerry, "Oh and we're good to deploy solar panels."

The solar panels of The Falcon, and the other B.F.S', were huge fan-shaped constructs that could power the ship all the way to Mars, and apparently all the way to the Discworld.


	5. Chapter 03 - Fallen Red Star

Being stuck in a Jumbo jet sized spaceship for far longer than any human being has spent in space may sound boring, horribly tedious, and like staring out into the abyss, but it was not like that.

As part of the creature comforts of The Falcon, it has Virtual Reality sets as well as gaming computers, oh and of course our visors and wrist touch screens had their own apps and games to keep us entertained, we also agreed to have game nights since Bill brought his digital board games from Earth, including the absolutely infamous 'Campaign For North Africa' wargame which ran - yes, we played it - for 70 days overall, through our networked visors.

The two moments that highlighted the journey to the Disc would be the flybys of Venus and Mars, which for the days we were in the respective planets' Spheres Of Influence, our sensory, science, and mission specialists - Ares and Bill - were busy at the sensor stations.

But other than that, the days were spent either playing games or listening to the news on Earth, like President Howard J. Cruz winning the election by a landslide, and who won what in the latest seasons in sports, oh and also once-in-awhile there would be communication with Houston with regards to the mission.

Apparently we have feet on the Moon and Mars once more, while we were coasting to the Disc, SpaceX and NASA had signed contracts to bring materials for a Lunar base as well as for a manned expedition to Mars, godspeed to the first human on Mars, it was a woman who had set foot on Mars first.

However when the days were numbered and the Disc became a speck on the windows of our cabins and the common area, we began that mental preparation - that 'chair flying' level of preparation - of what we're supposed to do for the duration of the mission, we also had to take into account the possibilities where things may go wrong.

And then it came through our helmets, which we mostly wore around the whole time - they were lightweight, were shaped like our heads and not like that of a fishbowl, and they had the computer visors on them, "This is Houston - Flight, prepare for retrograde burn."

We manned our stations and battened the hatches, the ship flipped over so that its engines were facing the Discworld, and then the engines fired which slowed us down to more or less be able to be caught by the Disc's gravitational Sphere Of Influence.

We had to rely on the external cameras feeding live video feed into our visor screens to see the Discworld, the Bridge did not have a window since it was inside the nosecone of the B.F.S and it would be a bad idea to have a window somewhere at the nose-end of a spaceship in terms of structural integrity.

The engines cut out, as silently as it did before during the initial cut out over Earth and the cut out after the Trans-Planetary Burn, "We're now within the Disc's orbital sphere of influence." announced Valentina, much to the 'YES' and 'WHOO!' from Mission Control and from Cabin Crew.

"This is Houston - Flight, it's a beautiful world we're seeing through your cameras, and it's not just us but that of the whole world here on Earth, um…The President of the United States would like to phone you in a few hours, as well as the Secretary General of the United Nations…I guess you'd also like to know that the Pope has scheduled for a special Papal Mass at Saint Peter's Basilica, for your success and safety, at 6 pm local time."

Valentina turned around with a smile on her face, "We did it, Captain, the ship has weathered every rock and tide thrown at it, so to speak."

I addressed my crew, "Ladies and gentlemen, we're finally at our destination, but our job is not over yet, I'm instructing EVA 01 to proceed to the Moon of the Disc as per our plans, The Falcon shall conduct surface photography first before picking a landing zone for EVA Alpha." although to be honest, we did not have to conduct surface photography, I memorized the Discworld map in my head, but just in case.

"Roger that, Captain, EVA 01 will prepare." said James.

"And remember, just like what I always said, look for remnants of someone landing on the moon and be careful of the dragons that roam the moon…though they're very harmless." I added, what was I supposed to do, not tell them? I don't mind spoiling the books for everyone aboard this ship, everyone in Houston, everyone in the White House - hell, everyone in Washington D.C - because this was a real mission, knowledge meant life or death.

"This is Houston - Flight, EVA 01, give us a heads up when you're ready to fire, that means the doors must be open and everything is good to go, we'll give you a proper time for decoupling from The Falcon and approach of the Moon." came the voice from Earth.

"Roger, Flight." replied James.

I left my seat and went to the common area and I simply looked at the Discworld in all its splendor, there it was, the Great A'tuin and the four elephants on its back; Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon and Jerakeen, every fan of the books would want to be aboard this spacecraft.

I decided to hold up my wrist screen which was basically a smartphone, switched on the camera, and recorded a video for those back on Earth, the Disc was behind me and I waved at the camera and I said, "To those back on Earth, here you go, the Discworld!"

As soon as I had hit the kill switch on that camera, we all heard Valentina's smooth and gentle voice, but somehow it sounded rushed and she actually cursed out loud, "Brace for evasive maneuvers!"

I immediately grabbed onto the nearest handlebar, the last thing any one would want to find themselves in during an evasive maneuver would be in the middle of the ship just floating, because as soon as the ship jerks to one side at 2gs of acceleration, you'll see yourself moving against the direction of the movement of the ship, that would feel a lot like being run over by a car once you hit the wall.

I thought Valentina was just pulling our leg but I held onto the handlebar nonetheless, and then we felt the jerk, we had to fire our our upward facing thrusters by the feel of it because my arm was pulled down. "Val, what was that?" I asked but then I saw it.

Something was orbiting the Discworld exactly on the same plane as our orbit but in the opposite direction and at a slightly faster velocity compared to our velocity with respects to the Discworld, and this thing just went above our heads like a bullet.

"Did you see it, Captain?" exclaimed Jerry.

"Yeah, I did." I said, though I said to myself that it just cannot be what I thought it was.

"This is Houston - Flight, what was that you saw?"

"Sir," answered Valentina, "we just saw a Space Shuttle sharing our orbital plane, nearly hit it, thankfully we were able to dodge it on time."

"Come again, Von Braun, did you say Shuttle?" asked the Flight Director.

"Yes sir, it was black and white, had the American Flag on the side, and it had the usual tail, and all other things that could be easily identified with the Shuttle." reported Valentina.

It was the Shuttle alright, I have been trained before to operate a Shuttle as its pilot and the eventual commander of the STS-300 rescue mission should there be a need to, and I can tell that it was the Space Shuttle that nearly hit us.

That opens up a lot of questions, the Space Shuttle was heavy and did not have the engines to push it this far into the outer solar system, it couldn't even make it to the Moon or Geostationary Orbit under its own power! So how did one get here?

"What now, Captain?" asked Valentina.

I addressed my crew again, "EVA 01 mission is to go as normal, as for our heading and telemetry, try getting us to an intercept with that Shuttle, we'll try to dock with that thing, but also do try to establish communications." those were my orders.

It was not like Star Trek or Star Wars, in fact the reality of spaceflight-…actually this mission pushes the very boundary of 'reality of spaceflight', I mean Neil Armstrong did not have to approach a derelict looking spaceship did he?

I cannot simply order 'Get a life-sign scan on that ship' or 'Fire lasers at the ship' or 'Teleport aboard the ship and look for survivors' or 'Scan for other ships within the area', in reality, we were quite blind, our sensors only analyzed the surroundings through color and luminosity as well as through X-ray and through other cameras and filters, there is nothing like radar or sonar in space.

The only way of being able to find out would be to dock with the Shuttle, carefully, and have a boarding party enter the cockpit and recover whatever we can, even if we find a dead body we have to have them properly identified and get into contact with their families as soon as possible.

"Okay, Captain, I have a calculation from the computer, we'll have an intercept in ten minutes." said Valentina through the comm lines.

"Aye, this thing is efficient." remarked Jerry, "Our fuel for the Reaction Control System is barely used with all that emergency maneuvers."

"Captain, this is EVA 01 Commander James Thompson and company reporting, we've gone through the Dragon checklist and are waiting for release."

"This is Houston - Flight, copy that EVA 01, Captain, open the doors."

I spoke through the intercom, "Jerry, open those doors."

We heard the hydraulics move, or rather anyone in the common area would hear this soft and gentle rumbling mechanical noise emanating from the airlock leading to the pressurized tube.

"This is EVA 01, we have successful decoupling, we're now on our way to the moon." said James.

"This is Houston - Flight, EVA 01, you are go for Trans-Lunar Injection once you've cleared The Falcon, be advised that the moon is heading towards your prograde."

"Thanks, Flight!" replied James.

I floated to the weapons cache, which was hidden behind a secret compartment located just above the bridge which would be accessed from the far end of the top common area, and retrieved from it the family heirloom I brought to this mission; my great grandfather's Colt Peacemaker, he was one of those Sheriffs during the expansion into the West, the gun that won the West would now be used in space, heh, a cowboy astronaut, who would have known?

My gun came with a holster and a modified belt for space and I wore it around my waist before closing the cover of the cache, after doing so I ended up waiting just behind the airlock door leading to the pressurized passageway that leads to the payload area where the airlock was for the heads up by Valentina.

That heads up came shortly after, "Captain, the Shuttle is in our sights, I'm preparing to match our delta velocity with it."

"Have we established contact with it?" I asked.

"No, sir," answered Jerry, "we've been hailing that thing at all known frequencies used by the Space Shuttle to communicate with the I.S.S as well as with Houston - Shuttle Control."

We agreed to this open comm-line policy, meaning everything we say, everything I ordered, can be heard by all teams regardless of where they are presently, that includes Mission Control, although we were expecting for some major time delays between The Falcon and Mission Control, but unexpectedly we're receiving instantaneous communication, my best guess is because we're right beside a world that exists on magic.

"Houston, this is the Captain of The Falcon, can you have your people check on the Shuttle Orbiters in the museums." I requested.

There were six Shuttle Orbiters during the Space Shuttle program; Enterprise, Endeavor, Challenger, Discovery, Columbia and Atlantis, Challenger and Columbia were destroyed and the Enterprise never went to orbit, if one of them goes missing then it's obvious that someone has ran a failed secret space program.

"This is Houston - Flight, we're ahead of you, I dialed up all the museums which - as far as NASA knows - has been given the retired Shuttle Orbiters, and I had a team of three to check if the Atlantis is still in the Kennedy Space Center Visitors' Center."

"Well is it?" I asked.

"Yes it still is." said the Flight Director in a reassuring tone.

I floated to the top common are and pushed my helmet visor to the window as much as I could before the fear of breaking the computer visor stopped me from pushing further as I waited to be able to catch a glimpse of the Shuttle.

"Captain, our forward cameras could see the Shuttle." said Jerry.

"Thermal cameras show no life through the windows." announced Bill.

I waited until the moment we're just a few yards away from it physically, "Uh…Val, how the hell are we going to dock with that thing?"

"Er…" was all I heard from Valentina, "I may not have thought this through…I was expecting that we could override the computers into opening the cargo bay doors."

I had this idea in my head which I had been debating for quite some time since the announcement of spotting the Shuttle, "Val, get us as close as you can, I will go on a spacewalk."

"No need to, Captain, I'll get The Falcon floating above the shuttle with the windows facing this thing." said Valentina.

The whole ship rotated on its axis until what had been above my head was now below my feet, all I had to do was reorient myself so that the windows were sort of above my head.

On those large main observation windows, and on the cabin windows, we all could see the Shuttle, but I noticed something unusual about the markings of the Shuttle, "I think that is the Buran."

"This is Houston - Flight, the what?"

"Sir, fellas, the Shuttle has the words 'C.C.C.P.' on its wing and has the hammer and sickle on its side, this is no American Space Shuttle, this is a Soviet one!" I exclaimed.

"But how in the freaking hell did that happen!?" exclaimed Valentina, though do note that I had to sensitize what she really said, though what she did say forced me to remark, "Val, keep it professional here…you're most likely on National Television."

"Oops, sorry." she said, "But my question still stands."

"Well, the Soviets practically built a better Shuttle." chimed in Jerry, "I mean that the Buran did not carry the dead weight that are the atmospheric Kerolox engines unlike that of the American Space Shuttle."

"Sorry, I'm a doctor in studying planets, not a rocket engineer, a what?" asked Bill.

"Kerosene and Liquid Oxygen, inefficient for space but very explosive for atmospheric use, we usually use Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen for space engines, though The Falcon uses Methane for both atmospheric and orbital." explained Jerry, "Anyhow, the Buran relied on a Moon-grade rocket, the Energia, to get it hurled into orbit, and from there it would have used its orbital engines for orbital adjustments as well as deorbiting, and then it would use its four jet engines, ripped out from their Su fighter jets, in order to do a powered landing somewhere in the Soviet Union or any Soviet allied countries."

"Okay, that still does not answer the question as to what it's doing here." I said, "Wasn't the Buran destroyed during a storm during the dying days of the Soviet Union?" I asked.

"After the Soviet Union collapsed, Captain, so there is no way this thing could be here." said Jerry.

"Okay, so how do we open this sucker?" asked Valentina.

"The good news is that the first flight of the Buran was done completely by remote control, meaning there was no one on board." said Jerry, "Now we'll just need the Russians to hand over those codes for remote control override."

Oh great, now this mission has gone political! I sighed, "Houston, what's your take on this?"

"This is Houston - CAPCOM, the Flight Director is briefing the President of the United States on the matter, we're also trying to get directly with Roscomos for the codes."

I sighed in exasperation, the suspense was killing me, it was killing us, that is until the Flight Director went on the comm lines, "This is Houston - Flight, the President of the United States is now speaking to the President of Russia as we speak."

"This is the Captain of The Falcon, I'm going to do a spacewalk in order to conduct a ocular inspection of the front windows." I announced my intentions.

"This is Houston - Flight….we-…w-…we have no other options for now, might as well see what we're up against, you are…clear for a spacewalk." said the Flight Director much to my surprise.

"Thanks, Flight." I said as I made my way for the door leading to the payload area, "Jeb, get out from your cabin and assist me."

"Yes, Captain." replied Jeb.

We have a simple procedure for spacewalks; we would have a long cable which would supply us oxygen and fuel for our maneuver thrusters and would act as a tether, which would be held by another crew member who would yank on that tether as soon as the first hint of trouble was known.

Jeb assisted me in strapping the spacewalk pack to my back, it contained the small trigger-activated thrusters which would help me in maneuvering around in space, as well as plugging the oxygen line to the back of my suit, particularly somewhere over the shoulder area.

We both entered the airlock and cycled it, Jeb was to stay inside the airlock chamber with the tether line in his hands at all times, but should he have any trouble then all he had to do was press a button at the side of the airlock chamber and a system of small pulleys hidden inside the walls of the airlock chamber, where the very long oxygen line was also hidden, would yank me back into The Falcon.

Once the external airlock door hissed open, that door being the huge rectangular shaped payload door, I activated the thruster to gently push me towards the front of the Shuttle beneath us.

I floated gently to the cockpit window of the Shuttle, if I go too fast I may not have enough braking distance to gently slow down so I had to take this as gently and as precise as I could.

Once I was able to grab at the external handlebars on the top of the Shuttle cockpit, I used the handlebars to gently push myself towards cockpit windows, and once I had been able to peek into the windows, you won't believe what I saw inside the Buran.

"This is the Captain of The Falcon, a moment of silence for four fallen cosmonauts of the Soviet Union…I have spotted four dead cosmonauts inside the Buran, their helmet shields are up and I could see that they're dead alright."

What's more heart wrenching, so much in fact that I was not able to explain it through the intercom at the time, was that two cosmonauts - a man and a woman - sitting at the controls were holding hands, as in their hands were interlocked and even in death they did not let go.

"T-…Thi…This is Houston - Flight, we mourn the dead cosmonauts…and we have good news…Roscomos has decided to bypass the Deputy Prime Minister, also known as their boss, in order to give us the codes as well as the communication frequencies used by the Buran, CAPCOM is transmitting it now to the Buran through The Falcon."

It was a dramatic moment for me at least, to see those huge Shuttle doors slowly open, "Jeb, pull me back to the ship, let's get into the Buran through the right way, the airlock, and do it quickly before I get stuck out here!"

The tether did its job in pulling me back into The Falcon, we cycled the airlock chamber and got into the payload area where we waited for The Falcon to dock with the Buran, you won't believe just how Valentina's sweet sounding voice was a godsend to me at that time, "This is Valentina, we're docked with the Buran."

"Alright, cycling the airlock." announced Jeb.

The circular hatch opened, and we could see through the extended docking tube and into the Buran's airlock chamber, Jeb and I floated through the hatch, through the tube, and into the airlock chamber of the Buran.

I pulled out my revolver, "Woah, Captain, you brought a gun?" said Jeb.

"Defense protocols, I'll brief you on it later." I said, "Trust me, I don't like the idea of a derelict ship floating in space."

"What, aliens?" remarked Jeb.

We heard Valentina giggle, "Oh you two boys, stop it!" she laughed out loud.

We entered into the cockpit of the Buran, the door leading into the chamber was left open - or maybe it would automatically open once the oxygen levels and the pressure was the same as that of the cockpit, who knows?

Upon entering the cockpit, we saw two dead cosmonauts just floating and the other two dead cosmonauts on the controls. "What do you think happened here?" wondered Jeb.

"Jerry, can you control the Buran from there?" I asked.

"No, but Houston can send us the codes…I mean its computers must still be working since we were able to get the doors opened." said Jerry, "Why, what do you need?"

"I need for the lights to be switched on." I said, though our helmets had lamps on them, plus the helmet had a night vision camera just in case if the lamps had failed.

"This is Houston - CAPCOM, we're sending you the codes to switch on the lights and switch on the displays." we heard the Capsule Communication Flight Officer said.

The lights switched on gradually, I'd bet that the ship was running on low power at the time, though I would have lost that bet as soon as Jeb had checked a Multi-Function Display located on the side, right in front of an unresponsive cosmonaut.

"I don't read Russian but I think it says 94% power." said Jeb.

"Switch on your cameras, let me see, I can read and understand Russian as well as other European languages…you sort of have to if you're family is of a noble blood." said Valentina.

"Well, princess, here you go." said Jeb.

"It's Baroness, Jeb, Baroness." replied Valentina, "Ah…I see, it says 'Emergency Battery Power."

"Thanks, Baroness Valentina Von Braun." I said, it just had this ring to it to be honest.

"No problem." said Valentina.

I started looking through the cabinets and the boxes inside the cockpit, anything that would shine some light on the history behind this Buran, I did find several documents which were in Russian, the most interesting of which was a diary.

"Hey, Baroness, can you read this diary?" I said as I switched on my helmet camera.

"Let's see, October 23 1988, Peter and I have decided to get married…it was meant to be on Earth but now with our present situation, there is no way to get back on Earth…he gave me this…beautiful ring and-"

"Valentina?" prompted Jeb.

We heard a sniff and a sigh, "I'm sorry, it's-…a really sad story and…" said Valentina.

"This is Houtson - Flight, try to get a hold of yourselves-…I mean some of us here are also feeling down with the situation, or so what we imagine it." interrupted Earth.

"Their nuclear reactor overloaded and they were forced to hurl into space, leaving their electric powered orbital engines dead and they were…doomed, and…sir, the woman was pregnant." said Valentina.

A grim tail indeed, but it still did not show the whole picture, "Wait, let me start from the beginning of this diary…" I said as I flipped through the pages and back to the first page.

"October 21, 1985, I am now a cosmonaut, and not just any cosmonaut, but the commander of a bold plan of the Soviet Union, we have just spotted a Disc shaped planet floating past Mars and we had to set foot there first, I am now Commander Elena Vaslnovich, and my beau is with me too! Oh how wonderful this would be, I hope he proposes to me either before or maybe even after the mission once we're on Earth. Anyhow, the motherland calls and we answer, I answer, this was the motherland that defeated Adolf Hitler, pushed the West out of Western Europe, and was able to threaten Britain."

"Okay, how about this one?" I flipped to another entry.

"October 29, 1985, we've been given the details of our plan, apparently we are to loft a modified Space Shuttle Buran into orbit, and then using R27 rockets as well as Energia rockets we would shuttle to the Buran a nuclear reactor, an extended habitation module, a modified Soyuz lander, and supplies. The Buran was given a pair of electric powered nuclear engines that can be powered by the reactor, it replaced the two orbital engines. And then we are going to use gravitational assists from planet to planet in order to reach this mysterious alien world, the whole journey would take nine months. I cannot wait."

And then onto another one…

"October 23, 1987, finally after nearly two years of training and preparation, we were lofted aboard the Buran, me as well as five other cosmonauts including my boyfriend, I now write this in space with a pencil and…I just cannot, CANNOT, describe how it feels to be up here, but we cannot dilly dally for too long, we have a job to do, we have to receive and install the reactor, the habitation module, and the supplies."

Onto the next one, which I had a gut feeling was the Trans-Planetary Injection Burn.

"October 25, 1987, we are now on our way to the alien planet, it is so exciting! I cannot write much now with all this excitement boiling inside me, what could be on that planet?"

And then the next…

"September 19, 1988, we've finally reached the planet itself, but what if I told you that it was a flat world on top of a - and I am not joking here - a turtle and four elephants? You would have never believed me, if only Baikonur could see this, though they could hear our descriptions of it."

I flipped into the other page, we heard Valentina mouth softly some words in Russian, "Um, I don't think I should say this…as a girl, actually as a decent human being."

"Why?" asked Jeb.

"It…it's a very vivid description of how she and her boyfriend had…sex…while the other cosmonauts were spacewalking or were preparing for the landing. Not good for TV audiences but very interesting read for me-…I mean for scientists back home for long term human colonization of space." said Valentina, I could imagine her cheeks reddening.

"Right…" I said as I moved on.

"October 5, 1988, a sad news for us…the reactor had suffered a partial meltdown and we were forced to eject it, or else we would die of radiation poisoning, but nonetheless we had to push through with the mission, we have backup fuel since our engines can operate using its smaller nuclear reactors, however it would be less efficient and would only be enough to get us home, but that's alright for me."

Next.

"October 18, 1988, two of our cosmonauts now ride boldly towards the alien flat planet aboard a modified Soyuz capsule which was outfitted to be able to do a landing and to get back into space."

Next.

"October 19, 1988, I found out I was pregnant…I mean…the signs are obvious, I am no longer having my period and I have been suffering abdominal pain…oh God-…I mean…I would have to give birth by the time we get back to Earth, there's no midwife aboard the crew…I'm so screwed…well I was screwed - and it was nice! - but…enough with the jokes, this is serious! I haven't told Baikonaur about this, they'd kill me if they knew about it!"

Onto the doomsday part, or nearing that date.

"October 20, 1988, oh our savior, our God, why did it have to happen to us? Two of our cosmonauts, who were servicing the engines, just had to suffer an accident. One of the reactors blew up, mortally wounding the two, though luckily they were able to get back to the airlock, but by the time we were able to get them back inside, it was too late."

The next day…

"October 21, 1988….you know, it's very heartwrenching as I write this diary, as these days march onward, we have lost contact with the Soyuz Lander team, they have been presumed dead given that they have described a very tense local situation. The planet has life and much like our Earth has its own civilization, they were equal to the early industrial revolution but they were going through a war, a period of hostility with something not human. Soviet cosmonauts, Soviet citizens, my comrades, died in the middle of this war."

Next.

"October 22, 1988, Peter and I are the only ones left, not only that but the nuclear reactors in our engines had blew itself apart, not dangerous to us but it had left us stranded here with no other way back, the last explosion also took out our communication system, and also the other systems since we have no more power to use. The nuclear rocket engines were used to power the systems after the meltdown of the main reactor, but now that they were gone, we're now left in the dark. I told Peter that I was pregnant, he was happy at first but then he realized the situation and was sent into a depression."

The day after October 23…

"Oh my god, actually if there is even a god! Peter had went crazy and he actually strangled me, this was just a day after asking for my hand in marriage…I-…he kicked me in my abdomen which then had a small baby bump…I'm bleeding profusely from my groin area, I think my baby is dead now…I am writing this inside the airlock…oh god, Peter, please don't kill me!"

I floated to the dead body of the woman and found signs of strangulation marks, interestingly enough the bodies did not decompose, maybe because it was now in vacuum, mostly after the life systems have failed.

"Oh god," said Valentina, "the last page was smeared with blood! Wait, there was some other writings behind that."

I flipped to the page after the last one by the woman, this time the handwriting was different, and this was where the blood was smeared on, "I'm so sorry Elena, I lost control of myself, it's as if something had poured poisonous thoughts into my mind through my ears, I was not hearing voices, but I felt hatred and anger and I had to vent it, I am so sorry my wife, my lovely wife….and of course to our child, whom I have murdered! Our life support systems have failed…I think I saw Death a while ago." Valentina added, "Carbon Dioxide build up, causes hallucinations."

I had doubts with that theory, maybe he did saw Death on his horse - named Binky. "Captain, these people died horribly." she added mournfully.

"But I do not understand it." said Jeb, "The lady mentioned that the Soviets had conquered all of Europe except for Britain, how the hell did that happen?"

"Alternate timeline." I spoke my mind out, "Put it this way, the Soviets could not have executed this mission with their economy in tatters, that's the reason why the Buran was canceled…but since they conquered nearly all the European NATO countries, they'd most likely have the money from the war loot to execute this program."

"Good theory." said Jeb.

We heard another voice chime into the comm line, "This is James Thompson of EVA 01, we've touched down on the moon and Ares is now conducting EVA, of note, we found a spot where there are remains, mainly footprints and a banana peel…as well as a tattered flag, sending a picture of our Landing Zone now."

The picture flashed on my visor screen, that was the flag of Ankh-Morpork and those footprints were humans and one monk-…orangutan, and there were friendly moon wyverns or dragons in the distance.

"The dragons here…they shoot flames…uh…from their butts." added James.

"This is the Captain, carry on with your mission, I hope our little radio play of horrible events here did not dampen your day." I said.

"It made me cry a bit, to be honest." said James.

"Crammed inside a small space, your human emotions trying to get at you, and then in the end, nothing." mused Jeb, "Heh, a bitter fate." he frowned.

But what happened to the lander team on the Disc? "Has anyone wondered what happened exactly with the lander team?" I asked out aloud.

"Dead by some war, caught in a crossfire." said Valentina.

"But where in the books did that happen? I mean the only big wars there are against human enemies…but the diary mentioned an inhuman enemy." I said, "Well, and then the man, Peter, had suddenly felt hate and anger…noticeably against a woman."

"But maybe it's caused by the fact that they have no way home." reasoned Jerry.

I knew my books very well, and if you're a Discworld fan and you're reading this, we both know who the enemy might be, "This is the Captain, Houston, you better tell the President of the United States to have the entire Tiffany Aching sub-series in the briefing files of the Pentagon, as in if you have to pull out the original manuscripts from the Library of Congress then go ahead."

"What's going on?" asked Valentina.

"I know the books and something tells me that there is something not right with the Disc below, maybe it's either beyond the books or an alternate universe…and the only true terrifying inhuman enemies were faced in the Young Adult sub-series of novels, not the adult ones….come on, I briefed you all on this!" I exclaimed.

"This is Houston - Flight, we've been listening to your lectures, Professor, and quite frankly we think that maybe it's all too theoretical, by that we mean impossible…"

"I need to get down there and see for myself." I said.

EVA 01 chimed in again, "This is James, we'd like to say that we have noticed that our engines are not consuming fuel but are running nominally."

"Aye, same here," interjected Jerry, "we thought that these SpaceX things are just designed very well, that is until we realized that it was too good to be true."

"Must be because of the Discworld's magical field." I said.

"What makes you so sure that we're actually orbiting the Discworld according to your favorite author?" asked Valentina.

"The banana peel on the moon as well as the footsteps, that happened in the books." I said, "It's a little bit too coincidental."

"This is Houston - Flight, things are getting very foggy to be honest, retrieve as much papers from the Buran as you can and get out of there." ordered the Flight Director.

"On it." said Jeb, he began pilfering through the cabinets and took every single piece of paper, notebook, anything that could tell us more about their possible alternate history or timeline.

As for me, I chanced upon the wedding ring belonging to Peter floating above his head, the woman had the wedding ring clasped in her other hand, I took the wedding ring and slipped it into the other hand of the late cosmonaut, only in death do they part, I'm sure that Elena would have forgiven him…right?

Enough mourning, I had a job to do! I helped Jeb with the documents, apparently these Russians sure do love to write things down, hopefully these documents would be enough to paint a picture of their whole mission, I think we found the Commander's official mission log.

As Jeb floated through the tube and back to The Falcon, I turned around and whispered a prayer for these condemned souls, and even prayed that Elena and Peter would reconcile, I prayed the same prayer me and my sister prayed everyday - after waking up, after breakfast, before lunch, before dinner, before sleeping - to have our parents reconcile, it worked, and now I prayed that these two would reconcile in heaven, hopefully in heaven.

Once I cycled through the airlock so that the inside doors would be closed, but it would be useless anyhow since the oxygen supplies are out and so as the Carbon Dioxide scrubbers, but I guess it was some form of small closure, for me at least.

Once I reached the payload bay of The Falcon, I went on the comm line, "Jerry, shut the doors and undock."

"Captain, I don't mean to sound treacherous but…don't you think we should stay near, I mean look at the Buran, we could use The Falcon's 3d printers to replace some of its parts and make it into an orbiting station, the radiation levels are safe by the way, that's why I did not have to raise the alarm." pleaded Jerry.

I shrugged, "Houston, we need your decision on this one." I said.

"This is Houston - Flight, we advise against staying near the Buran any longer, however if there is anything worth salvaging, and if the radiation levels are safe, then you are go for salvaging, maybe if you can even fix the Buran, please do so…but Jerry, please don't go and end up resurrecting the crew!"

I laughed, that was a good joke, like what I said before, Jerry had this reputation within the Johnson Space Center of being able to literally fix anything. "Alright, thanks Flight." said Jerry, "These spacesuits can withstand levels of Gamma radiation, what else for basic alpha and beta radiation?"

"Either way, gentlemen, I'm going to be needing a landing party." I said.

"Why not with EVA Alpha?" asked Valentina.

"Val, I need you to stay there, you're a really good pilot, and I guess Jerry would be having his pet project. I'll incorporate EVA 02 into my team, Jeb and Bob, let's go take Dragon Two." I said.

"Yes sir." said Jeb


	6. Chapter 04 - The Dragon and the Turtle

The Dragon capsule made the Apollo capsule look ancient, like comparing a smartphone to a stone tool, it was a lander and a space capsule all in one but it was just slightly bigger than the Apollo capsule, imagine if the Dragon was available during the Apollo missions, they would not have needed to build the lunar lander!

We suited up and went through the pressurized passageway, but instead of going all the way to the end, we exited through a hatch in the middle which led to the vehicle bay, where Dragon Two was docked right beside Dreamer, I wanted to fly the Dreamer but the Dragon was more well suited with landing vertically, good if you have no clue as to how your landing zone might be, it may be too rough, rocky, or if we're just damned lucky, as smooth as the salt plains, in fact Apollo 11 had to change landing zones because the planned area was too treacherous.

As we did our ocular inspection of the craft, we suddenly heard Valentina's voice go through the intercom, "Captain, may…I have a word with you?"

We adopted an open comm policy, why did she want to have a personal word with me, "Can't you say it on the line? We do have an open comm policy…"

"No, you forgot something in the common area, and the last thing I want to do is float too far from the bridge." said Valentina.

I reasoned that it was a legitimate reason, "Alright, I'll be there." before telling the other two, "Excuse me gents, but our pilot needs to speak to me."

I floated back to the common area and found Valentina at the side of the window, holding a handlebar, "Valentina, what have I forgotten?" I asked.

She removed her helmet and motioned with her hand to do the same, I trusted her and so I removed my helmet, the first ever breach of the open comm policy, it's not because we did not want privacy for the crew but we wanted discipline and also to dissuade any private talk, we're astronauts first and foremost, not holiday goers.

She removed a necklace, "Captain, it's for you."

This was not a cheap necklace, it looked like a heirloom, it was a necklace with a ruby gem on it, a rare type I think, "A present?" I asked.

"No, it's my lucky gem…I'm sorry Captain, I mean I know we have to be professional and all…but with what happened to the Buran crew-…may I speak to you as a human and not as one of the robots you wanted to bring into this mission?" said Valentina.

That had hit me hard, throughout the whole year we spent together in space I had been a little strict on private life and professional life, mainly because it was what I know was enforced in the Navy, and in the Merchant Marine, and I just wanted to maybe enforce it strictly in what has now become humanity's most lengthiest and epic missions.

"Permission granted, Val."

"Jack, I love you."

That had hit me harder than it should have, I mean I know we're not teens but as a guy who was or could be mistaken for a psychopath for only caring about flying and fighting, "Valentina, I also love you but…we can't just-..look at the Buran Commander."

"Yeah, but…can't we…when we go back to Earth…"

"Val, thanks, really, no one has told me that they love me." I smiled, it's that silly thing called love that took over.

"I mean we trained for years and I have never met a guy who's as daring as you, or actually as daring as me!" Valentina smiled, "And the thoughts that death is not so far…well, I decided to tell you now rather than see you die without getting the chance to tell you."

I took the ruby necklace, "What's with the inscriptions?" it had runes on it, this may be as old as the Germanic tribes from the Classical Era.

"That was my family heirloom, it had been with me since I was a young lass and…I kept it with me until now, it helped me through the tense dogfights I had with the enemy over Iraq-"

"Don't over dramatize it, the Iraqi air force was incompetent." I sort of barged in.

"But it did not feel like it in the middle of an aerial dogfight!" said Valentina, "Look, if it had kept me alive, even after ALL the STUPID things I've done - and it's not just in war but in love also - then maybe it would keep you alive as well." she then added, "Look, my mother sort of believed in runes and still believed in the old pagan religions and those things and…well I think it's just nice to know that somehow, just somehow, we're safe, either by our hand, or by a god, or both."

I smiled, "It's the thought that counts, thanks." I said, our spacesuits luckily had small pockets that allowed for trinkets like these to be kept, I placed it in one of the pockets.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Valentina closed in and kissed me on the lips before saying, "Take care now, Jack, I mean Captain." I am not a poet, though I wished one was there to witness us kissing with the view of space behind us, I'm' talking about Saturn being a visible speck as well as the Buran and the Discworld, that was far more different than a kiss in Paris or in New York.

You know the saying, or maybe Internet saying, that when a woman loves truly she acts motherly, when a man loves truly he acts like a child, well I felt like acting like an excited child, but it doesn't have to be now, it cannot be now. "I will, Val." I said before wearing my helmet.

Valentina wore her helmet and floated back to the bridge, while I floated back to the pressurized tube. They were ready by the time I came back, in fact they had been waiting for me.

We entered the Dragon capsule, instead of bulky buttons and switches, we were greeted by smooth touchscreens, and also it would be interesting to note that these capsules can hold five people, compared to Apollo's three or the Orion capsule's four, and also our Dragons, as per our defense plans, would have hidden gun compartments with weapons in them for the EVA team.

"Alright, we're going through start up procedures." announced Jeb.

"Say, how do you fly this thing?" wondered Bob.

"Touch screens." said Jeb as he jabbed his finger on the touchscreen in front of him, "Alright, Captain, do the call outs."

"Hypergolic Engines?"

"Go."

"RCS Thrusters?"

"Go."

"Life Support?"

"Go, Captain." interjected Bill, "I'm seated where the engineer is supposed to be."

"Docking mechanism?"

"Go." said Jeb.

"Shut the hatch, get the doors opened, and let's decouple this bad boy." I said, somewhat excitedly.

There were these oval shaped windows running around the Dragon, we could see light seeping into the vehicle bay as the doors slowly opened, and then we heard Jerry's callout, "Dragon 02, you are go for undocking, godspeed!"

Jeb pushed a button on the touchscreen and we heard the docking mechanism go off with a 'clonk', and then slowly we found ourselves reversing away from The Falcon's vehicle bay until we were outside of the bay and we saw humanity's first true spaceship in all its glory from another space vehicle which at the time of launch was getting antiquated and was going to be phased out by the B.F.R.

"We're going into a retrograde burn in ten minutes on my mark….mark." announced Jeb.

"This is Houston - Flight, you're good for de-orbiting burn, however make sure you know your landing zone."

I had a photo of the geographical area of the Disc which the cameras of The Falcon has taken, shared the photo to Jeb through the visor, "Jeb, do you see that speck of land there?" the thing about these visors is that we could share screens, meaning if I opened a photo and drew a circle or a dot on the photo, I could share the photo to everyone else.

"What place is that?" asked Jeb.

"Agatea, should be a safe place, given the possible scenario that I think had happened." I said.

"What is it then, Sherlock?" asked Bill.

"Either two scenarios, something went wrong in the timeline, or something after the last book." I said, "But I cannot say as to which one."

"Captain, I'll share a visor window with you." said Jeb.

A window popped up on my visor, it was the N-body physics simulator program we were to use when the Trajectory Flight Controller can't help us, mainly when we are manually piloting a spacecraft. Based on our present telemetry and velocity, we would be hitting the atmosphere somewhere over the island of Krull in a near horizontal vector, given that the atmosphere of the Disc is similar to Earth, we would land somewhere in the island Agatean Empire, the Disc's version of the Chinese Empire, that is if all goes according to plan.

When we struck the atmosphere, we could feel it in our seats, we felt this sudden thump which was followed by a series of smaller thumps, it was a lot like driving on a smooth road when suddenly we struck a large road hump before suddenly finding ourselves to be driving over a dirt road.

For the next ten minutes or so, we were cut off from the outside world, just like in our world, any spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere of the Disc would suffer a communications and telemetry blackout.

Once we had cleared the upper atmosphere and was going at less than Mach 01 - or in Disc terms, just under the speed of light, their light - we regained communications as well as telemetry with The Falcon and Houston, in fact that's when we found out that something was slightly wrong.

"This is The Falcon - Jerry, Captain, the targeted landing zone that you floated around to our networked visors, you're going to miss the huge island completely, you're going to overshoot to a group of small islands to the coast."

"Oh that's alright." I said, I only aimed for Agatea because I know that something is wrong within the main continent, with the epicenter of this 'wrong' being either somewhere within Lancre or The Chalk, or both, and I guess I'm the only one in the team who gets it.

Based on our orbital photographs of the Disc with cameras of The Falcon, the map as imagined by artists on Earth was one hundred percent correct, in fact I'm using the artist-drawn maps reference in navigating on the Disc.

"We're going to start killing our horizontal velocity now, Captain." announced Jeb.

The four hypergolic engines of the Dragon ignited, it was like staging all over again, I felt being pushed hard into my chair, however that soon disappeared when our horizontal velocity was nearly completely canceled out and now we're going down vertically, now it just felt like we're free falling

I accessed my touchscreen console and switched to the cameras hidden underneath the heat shield, I had the covers over the lenses disengaged since we were now in the landing phase of our lander operations, I saw that we were landing among a group of islands, my best guess is that it was the not-so-explored BangBangduc, a country that was based on Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines however the author died before getting the chance to set a proper story there.

"We're conducting our propulsive landing." announced Jeb.

The engines fired continuously until we felt one final thud beneath our seats, "Alright, we've landed!" exclaimed Jeb.

I unbuckled my seat belt and stood up to the window, I saw that we have landed in the middle of a park somewhere on the island, the moment I saw the architecture of the buildings surrounding us, I was sure that we were at BangBangduc.

BangBangduc, or the little we know of that place, had plenty of references and parallelisms to South East Asia, given its location to Agatea - that unusual situation where Agatea is a super power while tiny BangBangduc was not - and the name itself ('Bang' could refer to Bangladesh or Bangabandhu, the founder of modern Bangladesh) as well as their food and self-defense technique, which by the way has references to the martial arts of Malaysia and the Philippines.

I removed my helmet, our sensors show that the atmosphere composition was exactly like that of Earth's so I'd gather that there is not much risk of breathing the air of the Disc.

I removed my helmet, chucked it into my seat, and opened the hatch while the other two were trying to get their head around the fact that we're on another planet, a weird flat but somewhat Earth-like planet, that is if you would not count A'tuin or the four elephants or the flat disc.

When that hatch opened, I saw a line of soldiers holding what looked like a crappy version of a musket, you know those old Chinese muskets that Europe fell in love with and improved until we've gotten the muskets used by the armies of Britain and of Revolutionary America and of the other European imperial powers.

The uniforms of these soldiers resembled that of the old Philippine and Indonesian military uniforms during their respective revolutionary era against their own masters, I've visited South East Asia plenty of times and I have read a lot about their histories.

They were shouting something in a mix of Tagalog, Indonesian, and Bahasa Melayu, fun fact though, those three languages shared a lot of common words, so much so that all I had to learn was the basic universal words and pronunciation and I was able to communicate with the locals of all three countries, albeit with very basic words.

I decided to say, "Wait, does anyone speak Morporkian?" that was the 'English' of the Discworld.

"Oh, you speak Morporkian?" one of the soldiers said, by the looks of it, he had the highest rank of his squad.

"Yes I do, in fact I am fleeing from the main continent." I decided to run a huge and long bluff, if they bite it, then we're free with these guys, "This here is my flying house, it's my house and it's also a vehicle to flee…uh…the main continent."

The same soldier then said, "Oh, so you're fleeing from the failure of the witches?"

"Uh…yeah, yeah." I said.

That soldier then turned to one of his subordinates and said in their weird language, 'Kunin mo si Presidente' which I guess translated to 'Go get the President'.

"Presidente?" I asked.

The soldier turned to me and said, "You landed within the ground of Malaki-iyan Palace, the official home of the President, unlike a majority of other nations, we have a Republic."

"Oh, so you're the Presidential security people then?" I said the obvious.

"The Presidential Security and Secretive Service Group." said the soldier with pride, "I think you know the problem as well as we do."

"The witches have failed, but what do you guys know about this failure?" I asked.

"We don't know much other than reports of chaos around Lancre and The Chalk, and all the areas of the Hub." said the soldier, "We've been receiving refugees for nearly the past two years and there's no end in sight, all because something bad happened to the witches, which pretty much meant a good chunk of the Ramtops, but trust me when I say that the States of Genus are having a far much worse time."

"States of Genua?" I asked, "Forgive me but I thought they were under Baroness Ella Saturday?"

"You really think that some people like stories and all?" the soldier shook his head, "Only the city of Genua remained the fairy tale spot, the other states surrounding Genua had formed a brotherhood of nations, especially with the failures of the witches." he added solemnly.

I saw the Malaki-iyan Palace, indeed it resembled strongly the palaces of the Presidents of the Philippines and of Indonesia, however it was leaning towards Malacanang Palace of the Philippines, but with some Indonesian-esque touches to it, I can tell because I've been there during my time in the Air Force when we were stationed in the Philippines, however that was way before Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, I think their President was an ex-Army general, that guy with large glasses, Fidel V. Ramos I do believe.

That's also when I saw the flag, oh boy, the flag of this country had the Sea-Lion from the Presidential Seal of the Philippines, however instead of just holding a sword, it also held a Fasces on the other paw and an anchor wrapped around its tail.

Soon enough their President showed up, you know how if you look at the historical photos, maybe between the 1900s to just before the war, of Malaysia, The Philippines, and Indonesia and you noticed that their leaders all wore suits? Maybe the additional garb like their traditional hats but they all wore suits, well this guy seemed to resemble those pictures.

The security bodyguards stepped aside and snapped a crisp salute to this guy, "Gentlemen, what had just landed here?" he asked, he had a pair of large round glasses and had a bald spot on top.

"Sir, we have another refugee, but this one had a flying house." said the soldier in Morporkian.

The President looked at the Dragon Two and nodded, "Interesting, are you a student of Leonard De Quirm by any chance?"

Well the fact that Leonard built the Disc's version of the Saturn V and was able to execute a space and lunar mission, then we're better than him, "I was a student but I have supplanted my master ever since."

The eyes of the President grew, "So why did you leave the main continent? I mean don't you have any inventions that could maybe help save the witches from It, Him..or is it now Her?"

"My name is Jack Dudley, sir." I said.

"I am Joshua Antares, the President of BangBangduc, these group of islands located off the coast of Agatea and close to Genua had become the last refuge for some." he then looked me up and down, "Are you a soldier? Is that some kind of armor?"

"Sir, I was part of a voluntary army to defend our town from whatever may come, but we're kind of desperate enough to use this cheap stuff." I said.

"Well then, Mister Dudley, I do hope that you can help us with anything that you know, I mean I know a trustworthy person when I see one, and whoever your superiors are they seemed to have made a soldier out of you." said Joshua.

"I just need some things confirmed in order to…make my theory hold true, or whatever I know based on what I've observed." I said.

"Well, the witches have fallen two years ago, as in out of the blue their most powerful upstart witch, Tiffany Aching, disappeared-…actually my ambassador told me that the situation at the Chalk was grim; their Baron had died, and interestingly enough his son, Roland, was to marry after his father's funeral, but something happened after the funeral and before the wedding."

The face off with the Cunning Man, but she won that battle didn't she? As in the whole thing with burning what was probably the worst of the worst of the bad guys of the Discworld, and wasn't she helped by her future self? But then, if she failed then that means this is another timeline where there is no future Tiffany Aching, or any future witches for that matter.

But, wait a minute, if Tiffany had lost to the Cunning Man then what happened to the fifth book, you know the book that I waited in line for just before I was hauled off by the C.I.A?

"Wait, the elves." I said.

"Ah that, my spies tell me that Queen Magrat was said to have had nightmares, visions, of the elves returning, and based on what we know about those elves, they are nasty and they once ruled the entire Ramtops." said Joshua.

"But you're far from that place, why are you so vested into the witches?" I asked

"National interest forces me to actively try to solve this problem, our harbors are filled with refugees, there are warmongerers in Congress demanding an invasion, or 'liberation' as what they kept on calling, of The Chalk from the control of the Cunning Man.

They were wrong, the Cunning Man was not human, it was not even a dictatorial figure any human can easily fight against, it's a poison that clouds the decision of the person, it is the rough music - or that moment when the first stone from the mob is thrown against a window or another human being - and it hunts down the most powerful witch and tries to possess her, all witches would burn if he would be ever successful in possessing one witch, the most powerful witch.

"But the Cunning Man is a matter of the witches, I mean do you think you have anything in store that could match this opponent?" I asked.

"We know that the Cunning Man causes mass hysteria and general breakdown of society, it had swept all across the main continent, including Ankh Morpork, we heard that the owner of the Boffo joke shop, who was a witch, was mauled by a crowd." said Joshua.

"So what are your plans?" I asked.

He looked around rather theatrically and sighed, "You know, I know that small villages decided on things through direct democracy, but we decide…well first one should contact their Representative, who in turn would forward it to the Plenary, who then would assign a Congressional Committee to look into the law, and three readings, with plenty of modifications and at least a vote in between, later the bill would be passed to the upper house who would repeat the whole process, and then their version of the bill and that of the lower, or upper, house would have to reconcile their differences through a Bicameral Committee and then they would submit the bill to me."

"So, your plans to fight the Cunning Man?" I prompted.

"There's a joint bill signed by the majority leaders of the House and the Senate to send in the Buwis Buhay Externis, the armed forces of BangBangduc." said Jack, who then smirked, "If you can't speak our language, there's a small joke to that, Buwis means Taxation, Buhay means Life, and Externis means external or outside."

A taxation of life for external means, what a great language they spoke to be honest, that's sort of true if a country has conscription, "So how about the internal forces then?" I asked.

"Oh the Watch? Or the semi-military version of the Watch, the Buwis Buhay Internis?" Joshua then shook his head, "We're digressing, I have to meet with the top brass of the Army and the Navy, look it would be great that you come with me, I mean you just came from the area and you must know of something at least."

I nodded, "Sir, I think there would be this strong possibility that the Elves would mount a huge invasion, I mean the witches are the guard at the edges of the world, and with them gone…"

The President slapped his forehead, "Gods! Why didn't we think of that? I mean we sort of had a suspicion but…is it true?"

I decided to bluff, "Yes, there were rumors that elves are going about by now."

Joshua suddenly looked serious, "Please come with us, oh and if you have any friends inside, please bring them with you."

"No, I think they should stand outside and keep guard of my house, the same way that you should get your guards to keep away from it." I said.

Joshua shrugged, "Fine enough then." he then motioned me to come with him, "Come on, follow me." he then told his guards, "Let the man through, he has vital information which we may need."

I was led into and through the Malaki-iyan Palace, its wooden walls were lined with portraits of past presidents as well as hints of their colonial past at the hands of - presumably - the old Ankh Morpork whose armies were under General Tacticus of all people.

We then reached this meeting room with a long table, think of the most generic Cabinet meeting wooden tables of all countries of Earth, which was surrounded by men in uniform, some wore green, some wore navy blue, some wore police blue.

"Mister President, who is this gentleman here?" asked another man in a suit.

"Oh, Vice President Joe Linden, this man here has just come from the main continent and he has vital information, very vital intelligence with regards to the situation there." said Joshua.

"Oh great, finally, with the clacks systems interrupted, we cannot get information from anyone else other than refugees who had been months away from the actual area of chaos." said a general, in fact he had the most chevrons on his shoulders and a lot of medals on his chest, "What is it that you know?"

I cleared my throat, "Your president told me of your plan to invade Lancre and the Chalk and impose order, well…the Elves are about to invade through the gates located at the Dancers in Lancre and at the Chalk." I saw the reactions of these military men, most of them were in shock.

"But without any semblance of a working government in The Chalk and in Lancre and the other Ramtops kingdoms and governments, who is to defend the area from the Elves?" asked another military man.

"Well, there is a government but they're all poisoned by the Cunning Man, and so they spent more time in killing off or chasing away their only line of defense against the elves; the witches!" I sort of exclaimed at the end because of how stupid that sounded, but it's what was happening…I guess.

"And this cloud of chaos spans from Ankh Morpork all the way to the Ramtops and nearly the States of Genua, right?" asked another general.

"Yes sir, that is the situation for a good chunk of civilization." I said.

The Generals all looked at one another before the highest ranking one of them turned to the President and said, "Sir, this committee, through this man who has officially confirmed what our spies have saw, hereby unanimously agree to declare Martial Law over the affected areas, now we have to ring up our allies at Genua."

"Wait, you don't trust your own spies?" I wondered.

"We do, but we wanted a third opinion from someone who's neutral, like you…wait, how were you not affected by the Cunning Man?" asked the Vice President.

"Well, sir, all you need is some military discipline and an authoritarian fist in your head." I answered.

"Fair enough!" boomed the head General, "We have ten Battalion Combat Teams waiting at their barracks, ready for deployment, but of course we'll need Genua to help us."

"You know, sir, you have a nice set of armor." one of the general commented.

"Thank you, sir." I said.

The President patted me on the back, "He served in his own town's defense against this enemy, but I presume that your town fell, right?"

I nodded, "Why else would I need to flee?"

"So, let's have a recap of the events, gentlemen." announced the Vice President, "Nearly two years ago, the witches fell to their enemy, we do not know how but it happened -"

"Tiffany Aching failed, somehow, she was possessed by this thing." I butted in.

"You-…you mean she's alive?!" exclaimed the head general.

"She's nothing more than a puppet I tell you." I said, "As you were saying, Mister Vice President?"

"Right, and then for the next few months after that, the authorities within the affected areas found dead bodies of witches and have noted mobs and witch hunts happening, and then Granny Weatherwax died two months ago of natural causes, and our spies have said that Nanny Ogg had died with an arrow through her head shortly after the burial of Granny Weatherwax. We can then surmise, gentlemen, that Tiffany Aching was to lead the witches, but then the most powerful witch had fallen, and now the elves are sounding the drums of war."

After that long winded summary, I said "What about Queen Magrat precisely? I mean I do not know much about Lancre I'm afraid, but I do know that it would be our best hope in getting something done, I mean at least stabilizing the situation first."

"Lancre is under siege, given that Nanny Ogg has been killed by a witch hunter, as for Queen Magrat we know nothing of her current status but we presume her as dead anyhow." said the Vice President, "This leaves us with a big area to police, populations and governments under the control of the Cunning Man which we have to take back."

"Ankh Morpork is safe at least." I added.

"That's good, but how about the affected areas?" asked a general.

"We have plans, under Martial Law, to shoot anyone who plans to cause any chaos." said the head general.

"Okay, but can you really police an area that big?" I asked.

"With the help of the Genuan Army, we will." said Joshua, "And there will be a top secret conference of leaders to be held at Ankh Morpork in three weeks time, we will get that support."

I shrugged, "That will be your decision, however I believe that my work here is done."

"Thanks for your help, Mister?"

"Jack Dudley, sir, Mister Vice President." I answered.

"Well, Mister Dudley, we'd like to hear more from you however we have some policies to get signed." said Joshua, "You may return to your flying house now."

"Thank you, Mister President." I nodded a curtsy before leaving.

No one stopped me as I left the palace and went back to Dragon Two, none of the soldiers and guardsmen patrolling the vicinity knew of their fates, of what was to come.

When I reached the vehicle, I found Bob and Jeb standing there waiting for me to emerge through the doors of the palace, "Captain, we sort of heard the conversation through your wrist touchscreen communication module, what happened to the heroes you've been going on and on during our way here?" asked Bob.

"Story's changed, in fact it had been derailed quite horribly and we're in the middle of it." I said, "Maybe the same could be said for the Buran lander."

"But you sort of described the Cunning Man as basically the worst thing ever in this planet…" Jeb said weakly.

"Yes, and he's winning! And so as the other worst thing of the Discworld, the elves." I said, not only that but with this floating time bomb so close to Earth, or at least within the same solar system, I sort of said to them that the Cunning Man might end up ruining our own world, but there was no evidence to support that, or rather there might be eventually be evidence, our world would be that supporting evidence.

"So what do we do?" asked Jeb.

"I want to see the situation for myself, we're in a very tight spot to be honest." I said.

"What if we just leave this planet and maybe focus our resources to exploring Titan before going back to Earth?" suggested Bob.

"But what if this turtle decided to go into the inner solar system like it did during 2018?" I asked, "Remember what I told you about how the Great A'tuin behaves, it would swim to the inner solar system for reasons unknown, but if it does it again with the Cunning Man alive, and the elves too, no one knows when or where the elves would suddenly try to invade Earth."

I know the elves would fail, regardless of whatever country they open their first portal in, they will be destroyed, it's only a matter of time, but what if the Cunning Man was in allegiance with them and simply uses the elven invasion as a decoy, whereas the REAL invasion would be him spreading hate and anger in our planet; think of how the Nazis came to power in Germany, now upscale it to the whole world, there might be a mega-genocide against an entire group of people, maybe by religion..

Bob nodded thoughtfully, "Then we'll have to stick around and resolve this situation, we have the technology to help these people, but what will we tell our folks back home?"

"I think by now they know, our open mic comm policy, remember? Even our wrist computers have communication modules, I mean we would switch it on during landing EVAs, like this one but, we kept it off in The Falcon to save battery, but you get my point." I said.

"Okay, but how about for us now, what do we need to do?" asked Jeb.

"We would ideally have to wait for the alliance to meet up in two weeks, now I know we could just fly there and maybe solve the problem ourselves but that would be a bit risky, I mean we're just part of this story now, we can't just shape it or re-write it like gods." I said.

"Maybe we should solve the problem, Captain?" asked Bob.

"I don't know how to solve this problem, I mean if the Cunning Man has taken over…I have no idea how to defeat that sucker." I said, "But we will find a way or they will, but either way we are just observers and small time helpers for now."

"So what do we do for the afternoon?" asked Jeb, he wasn't too far off with the local time, it was sunset more or less.

"Go roam around?" suggested Bob.

"You two go with that, I'll keep an eye on the Dragon." I said.

"Okay." said Jeb in agreement.

As I saw them walking away to the nearby street, I went back in to Dragon Two, got my helmet on and said, "This is Dragon Two, Mission Commander Dudley speaking, Houston…I know that you know of the grim situation here, please get me into contact with the President as soon as you can."


	7. Chapter 05 - Politicking

In the course of writing this narrative, of recounting what happened during the events of the mission in order to get a lot of things clear, I realized just how out of touch with reality some authors who have written about our mission really are, some of them have some inaccuracies while others have just practically written fairy tales / 'Fake News' , and don't get me started about the movie adaptation - Ares ended up suing the producers.

There is at least one author, Dr. Filmon F. Nantasan, of the University of the Philippines - of all institutions - that has written an accurate novel, maybe the most accurate one, about our mission, and as such I would be using his writings to fill in the gaps with regards to what was happening on Earth during the mission, because as far as I knew during the mission, there had been a lot of things going on in the background, lots of critical decisions were made, in fact I never knew much of these background events until I picked up his book years later, and even internet articles cite him as THE source for The Falcon - Discworld Mission, even though there are other authors after him who had written books as accurate as his, no one could have written their books without citing Dr. Nantasan.

###

From 'Houston, we've got a turtle over here!' by Dr. Nantasan, U.P. Institute of Spaceflight;

June 12, 2021 -

On the midnight of June 12, GMT, The Falcon had completed its insertion burn over the Discworld and this was the day considered by historians to be the date of formally reaching their destination, this sits alongside November 23 2020 of B.F.R - Lunar Mission 01 and the Red Falcon Mars mission on December 23 2020, both missions were launched in the wake of the seemingly surprise man rating of the commercial B.F.R by NASA immediately after the launch of The Falcon during the post-launch pre-conference.

The reason behind the quick human rating of the B.F.R was mostly because of how the complicated launch and refueling was executed without a single failure - in comparison, Apollo 11 had suffered 200 minor failures during launch, and because of political pressure to launch a human to the Moon and Mars as soon as possible.

The orbital insertion and initial missions within the Discworld's Sphere of Influence were all broadcast on international news channels as well as live streamed by NASA and SpaceX, the first exciting event was the moon landing on the moon of the Discworld with EVA 01 composed of James Thompson, Ares Bacon, and John Howell, which was conducted in the wee hours of June 12, approximately around 2:30 am, GMT.

However it was the landing by EVA Alpha that had been the main event, it was when a human being was to set foot on a once considered fictional world, a fictional setting, of course there had been much debate and discussions as to how the policies would be decided upon in interacting with the Disc.

Due to the fact that the mission fell under NASA's jurisdiction, the astronauts - whatever they do, whatever they may end up saying and doing - are therefore under the command and responsibility of the United States, which when translated to certain individuals would mean the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the Administrator of NASA, and the Director of the Johnson Spaceflight Center, in that order.

As far as the public knew when the international news networks began their coverage on midnight, GMT, that it was all calm and normal within the walls of NASA and the White House, in fact the general consensus was that the President would simply take the chance of having a photo of him phoning the astronauts in the same way that Nixon did with Apollo 11.

The issue with the Buran Space Shuttle did not make much headlines, mainly because it was initially misinterpreted by news sources as a malfunctioning Russian satellite that SpaceX and NASA had agreed to fix, this was before any live photos or videos of the moment the Shuttle passed by was released, and notably it happened after midnight where there was no live news camera at Houston, this was however corrected during the mid-morning press conference by NASA later that day.

When EVA 01 had landed, the general headlines were 'Men on alien moon; the historic first steps' or 'Falcon Disc Mission - Moon Landing' or anything that uses those words in any configuration, however when EVA Alpha, under the command of Mission Commander Jack Dudley, Bob Howell, and Jeb Baxter, the words were initially something around the lines of 'Man makes historic step on Discworld' however this was quickly overshadowed by 'The President of the United States calls for emergency meeting.' and 'NASA declares an Emergency'

I, the author of this book that you're reading, has been the man waiting in the wings, in that I was there initially as a scientist hired by NASA during the lead up to the mission as a specialist in astrophysics, however I found myself to be in the meeting room of the President of the United States because of the State Visit of the President of the Philippines, Luis Balroa Quezon, to whom I served as science adviser.

We were in the Philippine Embassy in Washington D.C having an early breakfast at around 5 am, Eastern Standard Time, with President Quezon when a staff member of the embassy approached us and said "Mister President, the White House is on the line."

President Luis Balroa Quezon, who was once the Ambassador to the United Kingdom before running for the 2016 Philippine Presidential Elections, was also known to be a fan of Discworld, having been spotted at the midnight release of the last book - which some have said has helped his campaign because of how his social media accounts have showed an intelligent but friendly candidate compared to the other candidates who were from political families and it all started with the photos of him goofing off somewhat with the other fans at the book shop.

The President left the table and went to the office of the Ambassador where the phone was located, he then came out shortly after and said, "Gentlemen, we have to go now, to Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House."

"Were you invited or were you told to go there?" I asked.

"Both, they sort of need an expert of the Discworld that they could trust, and you know how I've been spewing nothing but about the Discworld for the past few days I've been here." said President Quezon.

We took the diplomatic sedan to the White House under police escort, in fact we became an object of breaking news when CBS first broke the headline; 'President of the Philippines heads to the White House, may serve as temporary Discworld adviser to the President of the United States, according to sources in the White House'

I'll be honest with you, I'm not a lawyer but a friend of mine, the Dean of the U.P. College of Law, had told me later on that what we did was unprecedented, in fact not even the legal adviser of President Quezon had knew precisely what to say about a head of state being phoned by another head of state to serve as the latter's adviser, he had nothing to say whatsoever.

However President Cruz, for the years in the lead up to the mission, has always said that the mission was for all mankind and not just for America, this might have been his way of putting that idea into action, by inviting a non-American expert into his office.

When we reached the White House, we were not greeted by U.S. Marines in Dress Uniforms, we were instead greeted by Secret Service personnel who were hurrying us to get in. We were escorted to this special meeting room within the White House, it was where most of the 'war room' photos were taken, such as the one when President Barack Obama had monitored the mission to arrest Osama Bin Laden.

But that photo was ten years old, the war room that we were escorted to looked state-of-the-art, it was most probably as high tech as The Falcon by the looks of it, when we entered this war room we found the President of the United States seated along with the Administrator of NASA, along with his other aides such as the Secretary of State, his Chief Legal Counsel, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Adviser.

"President Quezon," said President Cruz who stood up and shook hands with his Philippine counterpart, "we're sorry for phoning you up, but we think that you're the best Discworld expert within the D.C. area."

That was not hyperbole, when President Quezon was studying at the University of the Philippines for his pre-law course, Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing, he took the then recently released 'Color of Magic' by Terry Pratchett and argued point-by-point that the book had taken all the concepts of fantasy and broke it down, he would win the Best Thesis for that year under the College of the Letter and the Arts.

Furthermore, President Quezon had written blogs about the books as they came out, in fact he was known more for being intelligent but a huge geek and the former appealed to the older voters while the geekiness side of his appealed heavily to the young voters.

"Yes, I do believe I've heard that title bestowed upon me multiple times." said Quezon, "However I do believe that this is all unprecedented."

The Legal Adviser of the President of the United States stepped forward, "Your Excellency, actually this is nothing more than a discussion of plans, similar to how President Bush and British Prime Minister had held video conference calls."

But in my opinion it was lawyer talk for 'A, B, and C are similar…since D is made up of chunks of those other three, then therefore D is also similar to A, B, and C.', but I digress.

We sat on one side of the table while the Americans sat on the other side, with the President of the United States seating ahead of the table with President Quezon to his right. There was this huge screen composed of several TV screens stuck together, the screen was dominated by two windows; the round table at the Pentagon, and Air Force Two; the Vice President's Airplane.

"Gentlemen, thanks for being here. Now we're here because NASA has declared an emergency, and it would be great if you can explain what it is." began President Cruz, who was glancing at the NASA Administrator.

The NASA Administrator began, "Mister President, EVA Alpha of The Falcon made landing on the Disc at approximately 3 am, Eastern Standard Time, which then the Mission Commander had made contacts with the President of the country he landed on, in fact the spacecraft, Dragon Two, landed at the front yard of the Presidential Palace of the country they landed on."

"Have they been detained?" asked the Secretary of State.

"No, Mister Secretary, the Mission Commander had actually been welcomed by the President of the country, known as BangBangduc, and then the Mission Commander had actually used his knowledge of the books in order to bluff his way through in order to win their trust."

"Does NASA know what he said to them?" asked President Cruz.

"We have a transcript of what he and the others have said, their spacesuits had good microphones and cameras that could pick up what they've talked about, the problem is that we have no idea what it was about." said the NASA Administrator, "Even the ones who have read the books did not have that much of an understanding of the area, which was why we requested that a trusted and well known Discworld expert could be here with us today, which apparently would come in the form of the President of the Philippines."

"Can we have a look at the transcript?" asked President Cruz.

This meeting table had computer tablets embedded on them in an angle, the digital transcripts were sent through those computer tablets, it took some time for me to read through them but President Quezon simply glanced through it and had a shocked look on his face.

"What is it, Mister President Quezon?" asked the NASA Administrator.

"If all of these are true, then you've sent American citizens to die, possibly…certainly, in the worst possible ending of a Discworld story." began President Quezon.

This statement had drawn the ire of the guys at the Pentagon, "Mister President, please explain to us what the threat is." said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the screen.

"The threat is The Cunning Man, who should not be treated as a human enemy, it's a supernatural one, and if these transcripts are right, then one of the greatest enemy of the Discworld universe has become the enemy of the United States of America, and maybe even the world given the vested interest in this mission." said President Quezon.

"So who the hell is this 'Cunning Man'?" asked the Vice President on the screen.

"He's this creature that spreads hate and anger directly into people's heads, much like how Hitler had gotten a nation to hate on Jews." said President Quezon.

"How did he lose in the books?" asked the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

"He was defeated at the hands of Tiffany Aching, the younger protagonists of the books, who-…look, you would also have to understand the witches, they wear pointy hats, are composed entirely of women, and they start at an early age but not everyone could be a witch, and these witches are more akin to Red Cross Doctors, UNICEF Volunteers, U.N Peacekeepers, than the usual idea of witches." President Quezon explained, "You see, the witches are the 'do-all' kind of people, they are there to serve their rural communities, they act as midwives, caretakers, veterinarians if they're in a farming community, wise women for political leaders - a.k.a akin to your chief political advisers, Mister President - undertakers, judges where there is no courts of law, you name it."

"And the connection between the Cunning Man, Tiffany Aching, and the witches?" asked the Vice President.

"Tiffany Aching was their best upstart witch, she was to be the leader of the witches after the death of their then leader Esmerelda Granny Weatherwax who would pass on naturally in the beginning of the last book, the same book where Tiffany would assume the leadership of the witches." said Quezon, "But then the Cunning Man…he is the greatest enemy of the witches, he fights the witches through dirty ways."

Quezon then reached for a glass of water and gulped the whole glass before resuming his lecture, "These dirty ways would include influencing hate, suspicion, and anger against the witches, influencing certain murderous criminals and psychopaths to conduct witch hunts, and the thing he wanted to do with Tiffany, the most powerful witch at the time, was to possess her, tear her soul out and occupy her body." he then did this dramatic pause and ended with "Gentlemen, the Cunning Man is a demon, a plague."

I saw the reaction of the Vice President, he did a silent sign of the cross and said "Damn.", while the guys at the Pentagon I overheard asking "Can't we send in SEAL Team Six to hunt down this motherf*****?"

"But that's not all, these witches acts as the guards between the division of worlds, both figuratively and literally, the other enemy of the Discworld would be the Elves who uses the same influencing powers as the Cunning Man, but instead of hating witches, they could instantly enslave normal humans having humans bow down to them." Quezon paused and gasped, "But if the Cunning Man has won, then that means …the elves are going to invade with little to no resistance!"

"Mister President if this all true then we have to get our own astronauts out of there." pleaded the National Security Adviser.

"Wait, have you spoken to the Mission Commander himself?" asked President Cruz.

"He wanted to speak to you directly, sir." said the NASA Administrator, "He said he had something to explain, but we're sort of having trouble in patching him through Houston and to the White House."

"But are your staff working on it?" asked the Vice President.

"They should be calling at any moment." said the NASA Administrator.

Lo and behold, the main computer that had the control of the screen made a ringing noise, a technical assistance guy answered the call and said "Sir, it's Houston."

"Put it on screen if there's a video feed." said President Cruz.

There was in fact a video feed, it was that of Mission Commander Jack Dudley who was inside one of the Dragon capsule/lander, we heard the voice of Houston Mission Control, "You're now connected with the White House, the President of the United States is on the line."

"Thanks, Houston." said Dudley,"Mister President, I could see you from here and I hope you can too from there."

"Yes we could hear and see you clearly, Mister Dudley, and I do hope you can recognize our guest here." said President Cruz, referring to President Quezon.

Dudley did a double take, "Wait a minute, Ambassador-…I meant President Luis Balroa Quezon? Didn't I meet you at the book store?"

"Yes, that was me, Captain." said Quezon, "I have been invited here to explain your transcript between you and the officials of BangBangduc."

"So they all know about the threat of the Cunning Man?" asked Dudley.

"Yes, Captain, they also know more or less about the witches, Tiffany Aching, and the elves." said Quezon, "So how do you propose we solve the possible issue?"

"Possible?" asked Dudley.

"Have you visited the Chalk and checked it?" asked Quezon.

"Not yet, sir, but we are planning to." said Dudley.

Quezon then turned to the others and said, "Oh and the witches operate at around a good chunk of the Discworld, mainly the center area with some witches reaching the biggest city of the planet." he then turned to the technical assistant, "Can you show a picture of the Discworld's topography?"

The touch screen tablets and the huge screen then showed the map being used by NASA as a reference in navigating the Discworld, Quezon went to the screen and pointed at the main continent, "This here composes a good chunk of the population of the whole Discworld, this is where the witches mostly operate in, and thus this is the battleground."

"Then where is this BangBangduc?" asked the Vice President.

"Mister Vice President, BangBangduc would be here where we are" said Dudley who then transmitted a 3d rendered picture of the Disc with their entry trajectory and landing zone, it too popped up on our screens.

"So I do believe that the government of BangBangduc wanted to invade and declare Martial Law?" clarified President Cruz.

"Yes sir, that is what I discussed with them-…I was able to convince them that I was an inventor who had built a flying machine - slash - house and that I just came from the Ramtops region." said Dudley.

"Please tell them do not." said Quezon, "We've seen how bad Iraq went, what else with an entire continent infested with elves and the Cunning Man."

"And possibly other creatures." said Dudley, "I mean with this supernatural uprising…the vampires may be in it too! But that's only a possibility."

Quezon nodded, "Don't forget about the other supernatural creatures that the elves might summon."

"True," nodded Dudley in agreement.

"Do you have any plans on how to defeat this Cunning Man?" asked President Quezon.

"Sir, I do, and I also guess that you know that the solution would be to…"

"Kill Tiffany Aching, she's now as much of a target as Osama Bin Laden, with her as the host of the Cunning Man…well her soul is gone, might as well get rid of the body." said Quezon.

This had caused a stir, depending on where you were, some would say it started with the Pentagon, or Air Force Two, or the White House, but I would say it began at the same time, that's what happens when people are trying to get their voices heard at the same time.

"Gentlemen, please, this is a formal and serious meeting." said President Cruz, "You first, Secretary of Defense, what do you have to say?"

"With all due respects, we cannot just send in our astronauts to suddenly become SEAL Team Six, if you know what I mean, we only trained them for self-defense and not to start a war or conduct an assassination mission."

"But what if this Not-Tiffany would suddenly attack Dragon Two or, God forbid, The Falcon?" asked Quezon.

"Then only under self-defense can we authorize the use of the weapons cache." said the Secretary of Defense.

"Do you have any strategic weapons in this cache?" asked President Cruz.

"We do have strategic weapons such as a modified orbital Tomahawk missile battery that we engineered to be hidden inside The Falcon." said the Secretary of Defense, though in retrospect, it was quite interesting how they took President Quezon into their confidence this quickly, but then again no one knows the Discworld as much as Quezon and he was in the room right there and then.

"How about you, NASA Administrator?" asked President Cruz.

"Sir, I agree with the Secretary of Defense, however I agree more with the National Security Adviser in that we have to evacuate our astronauts immediately, we could instead maybe land on Titan instead before going back to Earth." said the NASA Administrator.

"How about the Joint Chiefs?" asked Cruz.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs remained in thoughtful silence for few moments, "Well, sir, I think we should know the scenarios if we evacuate without fighting the enemy."

"How about this, the Cunning Man invades our planet and causes chaos here." said President Quezon.

"It's true, Mister President, I think - as an expert of the theories of this planet - that the Cunning Man coming here might be possible." said Dudley, "Look, this planet works and exists upon story-belief, in that portals and other things which we may think of as fictional may be real, of course with respects to the fact that this world is a fantasy one."

President Cruz rubbed his chin and took a few moments to think it through, "Gentlemen," he began, "if this threat would become worse, I am authorizing you, Captain Dudley, to initiate a military strike-kill order with those Tomahawk batteries if you cannot stop this Cunning Man with your small-arms, are we alright with that?"

The Secretary of State raised an interesting point "But what about the civilians?" he asked, "I know that they're under the influence of this enemy, but if ever we end up killing them as well…"

"Then we shall decide on when we can use those Tomahawk missiles." said Cruz, "Captain, if you know what you're doing, and we trust that you know what you're doing, I am authorizing you to take any actions necessary to fight this enemy, even if you have to help the nations there, but if you know that your supplies are about to run out, you are to leave immediately."

"Don't worry sir, we have made connections with people in high places here." said Dudley reassuringly.

"Good, is there anything else?" asked Cruz.

"No sir, I have said everything I had to say." said Dudley.

"You may leave now, Captain." said Cruz.

"Thank you, sir." said Dudley before the line was cut.

President Cruz then massaged his temples, "President Quezon, you're our expert here, is there a way to kill that planet?"

"Sorry, you do mean that you want to kill the turtle of which the worlds sits on top of?" said Quezon.

"Has the Cunning Man been killed before after becoming successful in taking over the most powerful witch?" asked Cruz.

"No, you have to understand that the Cunning Man comes again and again, whenever he senses a powerful witch, and somehow…just somehow…Tiffany lost, the first and last loss the witches can maybe handle based on what we know." said Quezon.

"And we can be certain that whatever the books say…their backgrounds…the theories, they're all applicable to this situation?" asked Cruz.

Quezon nodded, "The mere fact that the Discworld is here in all its entirety, that the map that NASA uses was the one made by the author's illustrator and it is turning out to be very accurate…then the 'facts' here also include the bad ones."

Cruz nodded, "Mister President, I understand that you come here as an adviser, but you are not given a security clearance…"

"I understand, I shall leave immediately." said Quezon.

"No, I need you to stay…or rather I need for you to have communications with us, just in case, but we're about to discuss something that should only fall to the ears of my aides." said Cruz, "No, I cannot discuss the technical details…but where can we hit this world so hard that it dies out?"

"What, like throwing an asteroid on Earth type of apocalyptic?" Quezon clarified.

Cruz nodded, "I know you're a fan of the Discworld but…this is no longer a fantasy story where the ending is the ending, the ending would result in our end if this Cunning Man is not handled."

Quezon nodded, "Okay…there is one way to destroy the Discworld with one nuclear shot."

"We're all ears." said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Quezon walked to the big screen where the map was still showing and pointed to the tall spire in the center, "This is the Hub, this is where ALL the magic emanates from and is the reason why the Discworld exists, if we hit it here with a nuclear warhead…all life will be wiped out, that is if our planet's safety is under threat."

Cruz nodded, "Thank you, Mister President, and I do believe that as an allied nation of the United States, military secrecy is in force and was in force during the meeting."

"Yes, of course I understand, this is similar to the old Yalta Conference between the heads of the allied nations." said Quezon.

"We thank you for coming here, oh and a happy Independence Day to you and your countrymen." said Cruz, who stood up and shook hands with him, "We hope that we can talk to you when we need you."

"Thank you, and of course." said Quezon.

We left the White House immediately, as in we were hiding from the reporters who were waiting outside, wondering why the President of another country was 'invited' in the wee hours of the morning.

When we were inside the diplomatic sedan, I remembered looking at my President and saying, "Mister President, are you sure that showing up there had been a good idea?"

Quezon shrugged, "I only came there as someone who knows about the setting, I had no other intentions or agenda with them."

"But committing genocide, sir, if they do execute their plan…"

Quezon looked at me and smirked, "You know, you have no idea about Narrativium, in the end, the real good guys win."

I was perplexed to be honest with his confidence at that idea, but if it floats his boat, then so be it. As we went back to the embassy, I was still curious as to what they have been up to, in fact I did my best as a researcher to unearth documents with regards to the following decisions, and I think for the first time in history, we now know precisely what happened after we have left, based on the interviews with the officials there which I conducted, as well as the transcripts and minutes of the meeting.

Apparently the President had ejected the NASA Administrator shortly after we left, and that's when the more interesting plans were brought out.

"I heard that the British had developed an engine technology that has failed at NASA's hands," began President Cruz, "If this is real, then maybe we can ask them to build a spaceship to carry nuclear warheads."

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs asked, "Sir, can't we have SpaceX build a special B.F.R to do that?"

Cruz shook his head, "Sorry, I know that SpaceX is a private company and I think we need something more in the government level of security."

"We'll try to have a video conference with the British Prime Minister as soon as we could, mister President." said the Secretary of State.

"What do you have in mind, sir?" asked the Vice President.

"I have heard of the Skylon single stage to orbit spacecraft, it could take off like a plane, coast to space, and then land again on any major international airport, and since it could do that in one tank, then why not loft it to space, refuel it, and send it off to the Disc, after all as someone who has worked in the field of aerospace and astronautics, I know that if you can have a ship go to low Earth orbit in one tank, refuel it, it could be sent as far out as Saturn." Cruz said.

After much discussion within the table at the Pentagon, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs nodded, "Sir, we're to agree with that plan, sir, we suspect that the crew of The Falcon may have grown too attached to the Disc, maybe because they've been exposed to this Cunning Man or whatever, but we do not think that they would pull the trigger if we hand them a nuclear missile, but we're afraid that they might shoot the Skylon - should we ever get the British to launch it for us - down."

Cruz was said to have nodded, "Then we shoot The Falcon as well, the survival of our planet is now the foremost concern, if a bunch of foolish individuals want to get in the way then we'll just sweep them aside, understood?"

The Chiefs of Staff around the table said in unison, "Yes sir."

"We'll also need to search the author's home, by force if necessary, and also we'll need to forward the transcripts to the British." said President Cruz.

###

When I ended the conversation with the President, I found myself stuck in a certain problem in my head, or rather I have to decide on what to do next, logically we have to go to the main continent and see for ourselves the problem, but I don't think we could do it alone.

A few moments after the conversation had ended, Bob and Jeb came back and they brought back a lot of food, in fact they were carrying four bags each, I opened the hatch as soon as I saw them, "Gentlemen, don't tell me you looted a store."

"No captain, a baker and someone selling all sorts of food on sticks sort of just gave these to us…actually they were frequented by civil servants from the palace you went into, they told them to give us food and anything we need that they have as a reward for helping the country greatly, these are paid by your Presidential buddy." said Jeb as he and Bob laid the bags down inside Dragon Two

I nodded, not a bad deal, "Look, we sleep here for the night and decide further what to do next, but for certain we have to go to the main continent and to the hot zone."

"Can't we just follow them when their invasion comes?" asked Bob.

"We need to have the Dragon with us, but we can follow them, though I think we should get them to mount their troop movement plans sooner." I said, maybe because I was getting a little impatient, "Either way, we cannot go alone."

"I agree, Captain." said Jeb.


	8. Chapter 06 - Shattered Dreams

From 'Houston, we've got a turtle over here!' by Dr. Nantasan, U.P. Institute of Spaceflight;

If Sir Terry Pratchett had been alive at the moment the world had saw his setting literally come to life, he would have been arrested, detained without a warrant, and interestingly enough by plain clothes officers, and I write that because in the mere few days after our visit to the White House, news broke that some people broke into the author's house, but that headline was soon updated to 'Government Searches Sir Pratchett's House, F.B.I agents spotted.'

I had was able to interview those who have been pulling the strings around that night, and based on those, we could finally paint a picture of what happened on the night of June 12.

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Colin Hacker - Conservative Party, who recently had been able to muscle out the old Prime Minister, who had failed to navigate through the process of Brexit, in a dramatic struggle for power to avoid a crash out of - or no agreement with - the European Union, and at six pm, local time, he was at the Cabinet office in Ten Downing Street, reading the piece of paper that began the police operation.

The halls inside the street that was Whitehall, things were spiraling out of control when they received from their official contacts with the United States the transcript of what Captain Jack Dudley had spoken to with the leaders of a local government, as well as that of the discussion within the war room of the White House.

The moment the last word had been read by the Prime Minister was the moment chaos began, he reached for his phone and dialed for his secretary, "Humphrey Wilkins, please get the transcript we received forwarded to the Home Office, and tell the Home Secretary that I want MI5 agents and the Royal Military Police on standby." he then hung up.

He then reached for a special phone which was reserved for calls related to NATO, namely NATO Allies such as the United States, this line was nearly used during the Crimean Annexation Crisis, he then dialed for the President of the United States, forget having to notify his aides, this needed to be a swift and silent discussion.

"Mister President, tell it to me straight, what do we need to do?" asked Colin.

President Cruz was said to have been stunned when he heard the Prime Minister say that through the phone, "Well, we were not expecting a fast response."

"I was planning to launch a surprise search of the author's home for anything we could possibly use." said the Prime Minister.

"Same plans here across the Atlantic, can we turn this into a joint operation? I have F.B.I agents in the United States Embassy there." said President Cruz.

"Of course, I understand, do get them to coordinate with the Home Secretary." said Colin.

President Cruz had used the moment to ask what was needed to be asked for, "Mister Prime Minister, we're going to need the Skylon spacecraft to do a…possible…planet killing operation."

"If this is about saving humanity, then we will demand the company behind Skylon to give us a spacecraft." said Colin.

"We shall make this a joint operation, we plan to arm this Skylon spacecraft with Minuteman III MIRV nuclear missiles as well as modified orbital Tomahawk missiles, and we have plans to nuke the Discworld should it pose a threat." said President Cruz.

"I support the idea, this is a unique, if not, outright societal collapse here on Earth if the worst case scenario happened." said Colin, "We shall mobilize by tonight, in fact, I'll be getting the Military Police involved, we mean business given that what you've discussed with your astronaut as well as your expert could possibly happen."

"Yes, our world is, I would say, under our care for we are the only one who has the capability to do so." said Cruz, "We are the heroes." he added.

Colin nodded and smirked, "Then we shall defend to the death our native soil, as what had once been said in my alternate daily office; 'We shall never surrender'."

"Then it's settled, we shall attack the Discworld if it poses any threat to us." said President Cruz.

The phone call ended, Colin Hacker was not known for long telephone calls full of lip service, he often asked straightforward questions and demanded straightforward answers, should those answers start with the word 'maybe' he would usually reply 'Get your act together and don't be a 'maybe', be certain!'

He was also not known for telephone calls, in fact most of his orders were passed down by paper or by E-mail, depending on severity of his demand, if ever he ended up sending you a paper with red corners as well as an E-mail with the subject 'V.I.' as in 'Very Important', then you'd better respond or else.

It was through a simple E-mail that the sleepy hometown of Sir Terry Pratchett became as militarized as the Korean Demilitarized Zone by nine in the evening, with BBC News being the first to broadcast about the raid both locally and internationally.

I would have ended this recounting of events there and then, that is if only the Prime Minister had not decided to use the raid as his chance for the spotlight by having a Royal Air Force helicopter fly him there.

By eight thirty pm, once all the E-mails and documents have been sent to the related people and departments, Colin had asked for an air force helicopter to pick him up at the nearest flat plot of land nearby Whitehall; Parliament grounds, in a silent but dramatic way for a Prime Minister to go somewhere.

By eight fifty five, the helicopter was seen landing right next to the military roadblock set outside the home of the author, he disembarked and approached the group of men waiting for him, these group of men were composed of the F.B.I team head, the Brigadier General in charge of the Military Police deployed in the area, and an MI5 intelligence officer.

All of these were caught on cameras by the BBC, and the words that were heard had become headlines for the next few days; "Are we ready to raid the home of Sir Pratchett?" asked the Prime Minister snappily.

"Yes sir." said all of the men surrounding him.

"If anyone resists, tries to burn or destroy any of the papers, you are to begin with pepper spray and escalate to lethal force when necessary, let's go!" Colin clenched his fist in a way that had mirrored Nixon's famous image of him raising his fist in one of his speeches, this had become immortalized in the papers next day with the tabloids calling him 'President-Prime Minister Colin Hacker' and 'President of the United States of Britain, Colin Hacker' and 'Heil to the Furher Colin Hacker', it wouldn't help with the fact that the words 'FBI' was clearly visible on the jacket of the FBI officer present there in front of him when he shook his fist.

For the sleepy home town of the author, this was considered as too much, the images of the officers using an Army jeep to ram the gates and using a battering ram to force their way through the door was something you'd see in a raid against a known drug lord or a murderer, not an author who had passed on and remembered for being humorous and good-willed.

There was no one home, once this was made clear by the raiding officers, the Prime Minister and the officers that he spoke to entered the house together, that's when they began searching for papers, hard drives, anything from the author's house that could provide a solution, or rather what they thought was the solution.

Even now as I recount the events of that night, seeing the images of the raid on the BBC World Service, I always wondered just what would happen if the fictional worlds of authors suddenly became real, would they be summoned to the office of their head of government nicely or would they be treated harshly by government? If the raid on Sir Pratchett's home was proof of anything, I believe we're just a flamethrower away from having big brutes of officers raid homes and secure books.

In the more or less same dramatic way he muscled out the incumbent Prime Minister, he called for a press conference in the nearby churchyard with a table showcasing the collected papers, manuscripts, and hard drives as if they were confiscated drugs.

The first question asked during the press conference was another source of quotes that would make Colin Hacker into an Internet sensation, a journalist from the local papers asked "Why did it have to be this rough? What if the world of Hogwarts became real, would you arrest J.K. Rowling?"

The response of Colin Hacker was swift, "Yes, I have read her books and with respects to the author, if there was a portal to Hogwarts and if it posed a risk to our world, I would have arrested the author, raided her home or homes and have placed tight military security around the portal."

The entire chalke village, the name of the hometown of Sir Pratchett, had been placed under lockdown, we're talking about roadblocks manned by armed soldiers, helicopters circling the skies, and all those things often associated with war zones.

Another journalist asked, "Why was the FBI there?" to which Colin answered, "We're working with the United States since they're in charge of the mission to explore the Discworld, and yes my office understands deeply the rapidly deteriorating situation there."

###

We slept soundly through the night, and then the other night, and then the next, and then until we've sort of lost track of the dates on the ground, however our capsule clocks showed that it's been one Earth week, which more or less corresponds to the one week and four days we've been there.

For the week we've been waiting for the mobilization of BangBangduc in order to act as our ground backup just in case if anything severe happened, or rather because after reading the papers, no one would want to tread into Lancre or Chalk alone, we've spent the time conducting scientific observations.

Interestingly enough, the soil composition, the composition of the atmosphere, and the composition of the waters around the area was exactly like that of Earth with one exception, they were all irradiated by this unknown type of radiation that was picked up by our sensors, scanners, and Geiger Meters but they were not identifiable, I had a gut feeling that it would be Octarine, the very stuff of magic, flowing through everything in this world.

If only we had brought either of our mission specialists, we would have gotten the information quickly, however all we had to do to fix the problem was collect the information and send it back to The Falcon where Bob could analyze it through the laboratory and scientific equipment we have on board.

On the one week and fifth day mark, or rather the morning of that day, we woke up to the sounds of gunfire, or rather loud 'FWOOP' sound from the gunpowder guns they had, and then a church bell sort of chimed in. When I got out of the capsule, I was wearing our civilian clothes we brought from Earth, I saw flags of red being hung from government buildings and public places.

Bill came out of the capsule, his eyes still somewhat half opened, and he asked rather half-sleepily, "What's going on, Captain?"

"I think the invasion has begun, but they would have to sail a good distance to get there." I said.

Bill then saw something emerge from the sky, "Captain, look!"

We both saw a group of flying boxes, or to be specific a carriage modified to have broomsticks at the bottom to make it fly, "An airborne infantry, well that would certainly cut travel time down." I remarked, I then turned to Bill and said "Get suited up, we're going to Lancre, but remember what we've discussed, we get out of there at the first hint of something going wrong."

Jeb, who was more prepared looking than Bill, popped his head out and said "We're going now?"

"Yes, we suit up and fly now." I said.

"But how about our supposed back ups?" asked Bill.

"They'll be in Genua, at least we have on friendly city to run to, other than running away and going back to The Falcon." I said.

That's precisely what we did; we suited up, went through the startup sequence, and was up and away in a matter of minutes, we sort of executed a Disc-to-Disc flight, having reached the Disc's Karman Line for a few moments before going straight back down.

I must give it to Jeb, he was able to fly the Dragon Two like it was an actual science fiction spacecraft and not just some spacecraft made by present day humans, we ended up flying the Dragon like a helicopter when we reached the vicinity of the Ramtops, the cold and snowy mountains.

The center of the Discworld, the Hub, was the source of magic, and life is difficult as you get closer to the Hub, mainly because it gets colder - think of it as the polar icecaps on Earth, the Ramtops is the closest area where any human civilization could prosper, of course there are tribes living within the coldness of the area near the Hub, but no big settlement.

Lancre was the biggest settlement within the mountainous Ramtops, in fact it was the only notable settlement around there, and of course it would be memorable for Jeb, mostly after he exclaimed, "Damn this place, I can't see a landing zone, it's all too mountainous!"

I immediately accessed the 3d map which came from the scans by the satellites the space faring nations of the world sent up during December of 2018, and it took me a while until I found Lancre, or something that may look like Lancre, on the map.

When I did find Lancre on the map, I transmitted it to Jeb's visor, "Ah, got it Captain!" he said, quickly punching his fingers on his touchscreen and reaching for the manual override flight stick.

Jeb was able to get the Dragon Two to hover over Lancre for a few moments, just enough for me to have the cameras pointed downwards to have a clear picture of the place, "It seems to have been overrun by elves." I said, my heart was shattered at that point.

Lancre was now a desolate place, it was beginning to snow heavily, giving it that creepy feeling I got when I first imagined the realm of the elves after reading it in the books, I had been expecting for Lancrestians to be looking up and pointing with curiosity at our spacecraft, instead we only received silence and snow.

"Should we land, Captain?" asked Bill.

I then spotted a flicker of light, maybe a candle inside the castle flickering through the window, and then I saw a shadow of someone - a woman - with a crown or tiara on top of her head, "Yes, Jeb, take us to the castle grounds over there."

Jeb stretched his neck and said, "Alright, it's time to land this thing there." he said.

Landing was made difficult with the occasional gusts of wind, in fact this type of weather would have immediately earned a launch postponement or re-entry postponement on Earth, but we have a good pilot - maybe someone who was nearly as good as Valentina - and a good spacecraft with a fitting name.

After thirty minutes and five attempts later, we were finally able to land the Dragon Two within the confines of the walls of Lancre castle, a place that had been invaded way too many times, first the elves on Magrat's wedding day, then the vampires on the week of the birth of their first child, and now the elves again.

I removed my harness and straps and reached for the weapons cache of the Dragon Two, "Gentlemen, these personal defense weapons will be your best friend for the whole time we're on EVA." I said to them as I distributed the pistols and their ammunition, though I used my revolver instead.

The weapons came with specialized holsters that had the same color of our spacesuits, we wore the holsters, slotted the pistols - or for me, my revolver - into them and were ready to open the hatch.

We first checked on the cameras located at the sides to see if our coast was clear, or at least clear of any threats, it was clear, as in clear of any threats, civilians, or anyone.

I opened the hatch, none of us removed our helmets even though the air was safe but the temperature, on the other hand, was getting rough and unfriendly, "Well, gentlemen, here we are, witch country."

Bill nodded, "Alright, the big and scary forest with snow looms ahead, and here we are in a castle surrounded by that scary forest." he said.

I took the first step out of there, that's when I received a shock of my life, the Flight Director suddenly buzzed in, "This is Houston - Flight, sorry for being quiet but we've been a bit too on the edge just watching the way you've been conducting yourselves for the past few hours, however we trust your instincts, Captain."

"Thanks, Flight." I sighed, "Whew, you sort of scared me back there." Houston had been quiet for the past week, mainly buzzing in at least once a day to check in on us.

"Have you heard the good news?" asked the Flight Director, "Jerry did it, he was able to turn the Buran into a working space station, the madman has done it."

"Really!?" I exclaimed, we kept the intercom chatter volume down and only kept Houston's line on a high volume, which I should lowered when we opened the hatch, those elves could be anywhere and the last thing I need is to be spooked by Mission Control, "Well, good for us and a feather in his cap, we're proceeding to meet another local figure, a queen actually."

"Good luck with that." said the Flight Director, "Houston out."

We then saw a door open in the side of the castle, a guard came out wielding a old looking spear, I guess he was Shawn Ogg. "Wh-…who are you, are you elves?" he shouted at us as he slowly inched closer to us with that spear.

We raised our hands, "No, we're inventors actually, trying to make sense of this…uh problem."

The man lowered his spear, "Oh…um…the Queen did order for us to take in survivors and refugees." he said with much uncertainty

"But?" I prompted.

"They fled somewhere else." said the man, "My name is Shawn Ogg by the way."

"Jack Dudley." I said, shaking hands with Lancre's one man postman, guard, and standing Army (unless if he's lying down of course).

"Well, come on, follow me, allow me to introduce you to the Queen and the King…well…if the King could make it through." Shawn sighed.

"What happened to King Verence?" I asked.

"He was hit by an arrow form an elf who had somehow been able to scale the wall without getting noticed, luckily the King was hit only on the arm, it did not leave a deep wound." said Shawn, "Anyhow, come on now."

We were led through Lancre castle, I mean come on, it was Lancre Castle! I have only been able to imagine the place but here I was walking through its hallways and seeing the artworks of the past Kings and the one (mythical) past Queen of Lancre.

We reached the throne room, or what I would guess was the throne room where the King and Queen can hold audience with anyone from the public, we saw a gloomy Queen Magrat who looked way more beautiful - though aging but still - than any illustration of her.

"Your majesty, I have found survivors." announced Shawn.

Magrat looked at us and then looked down again before suddenly looking back at us, "Survivors? Shawn, they look like Knights." said Magrat, to be fair though, these spacesuits looked more like Knight armor than the bulky fishbowl and boxes of the Apollo program.

I did a theatric bow, "Your majesty, Queen Magrat of Lancre, and of the Lancre Coven, I come here - along with a bunch of bureaucrats - to save the Kingdom of Lancre and the adjacent areas." I said.

Magrat, who was the stupid - or at least naive one - of the Lancre coven, fell to her knees and wept, but I don't want to make it sound that dramatic, but that's what she did, somewhat.

"Your majesty?" asked Shawn.

Magrat stood up and sniffed, "I'm sorry, it's just that this had been such a long night to be honest." she said, "I mean for the past two years our people have began to experience hatred and anger flowing through the community, some of them have actually killed Nanny-…I'm sorry, Shawn."

Shawn sniffed, "My mum…"

Magrat continued, "And my children…at least they've been evacuated to Ankh Morpork…and-…my husband…"

"Is sick, right?" said Shawn, though it was more of as a plead that Magrat would say that.

Thankfully she did, "He's resting, but I don't think he would be the same man again," in the midst of her sadness, she was able to rally a bit of anger, "those fiendish elves!"

"Your majesty, we can get out out of here." I said.

"What, on the Dragon?" Bill hissed.

"Where else?" I asked.

"Dra-…dragon!?" exclaimed Magrat, "Wait a minute, I thought knights slay dragons and not ride them around?"

I smirked, "Your majesty, our dragon is a flying machine and not a dragon from Wyrmberg, I am an inventor and a Knight as well, but not like those old Knights."

Magrat fell to her throne, "I'm sorry, gentlemen, I am just…"

"We know and we understand." said Bill, "However we can offer you a safe ride out of here."

"Your majesty, how were you able to survive the witch hunts?" I asked.

Magrat shuddered, I swore that it was only an innocent question and I had not meant to rouse any bad memories, "By staying behind these walls, but then these walls are not safe anymore, not with an arrow somehow nearly missing my husband's heart!"

I shook my head, "Alright, we should get you out of here." I said firmly.

"But to where?" asked Magrat.

"Ankh Morpork, or Genua." I answered, I had plans to visit Ankh Morpork in order to meet the wizards, and Vetinari hopefully, and see how we could manage this.

"I think we can hide in the Lancre embassy over there." said Magrat.

"Then Ankh-Morpork it is." I said.


	9. Chapter 07 - Starman

_"_ _ **Ignition…lift off of the Falcon Heavy!**_ _" - SpaceX Livestream, February 6 2018._

The moment we've met Queen Magrat was the moment I got a taste of character development, I remembered first imagining her as a weakling but then she ended up shooting an elf on the eye through a keyhole with a crossbow, and she matured from there onwards.

This dark moment of the locals of Lancre was no exception for her, she was quick to organize her remaining servants to help pack up their bags, seal all doors, lock all gates, and appointed Shawn to keep an eye on the castle, all the while we were hanging around in the throne room with nothing much to do, other than act paranoid and glance out the window to look for any elf snipers.

The next thing to happen would be Magrat entering the throne room with her bags and saying, "Well, can't we go to your vehicle now?"

"How about Verence?" I asked.

"He's being assisted by Shawn to your Dragon as we speak." said Magrat, "Come on now."

We went back to Dragon Two, that's where we saw King Verence II with Shawn, "Mister Ogg, who are these people?" asked Verence.

"They're here to help us, Verence." said Magrat, "Come on now, let's…get into this…thing." she added.

Jeb opened the hatch and assisted Verence into a chair, while Bill assisted Magrat with her bags, which he - interestingly enough - stowed in the cargo area meant for scientific experiments.

Once we strapped Verence and Magrat into the chairs, we shuttered the hatch and strapped ourselves in, that's when Jeb notified me with something that I had not wanted to hear ever, "Captain, we can't fly into a low Disc orbit, it would be a bit unsafe going for a high trajectory into a city."

"So that means…we would have to fly like a helicopter to somewhere just outside of Ankh Morpork?" I said, it was not supposed to end as a question but somehow it did, because it would mean that we'd have to fly over…

"Yes sir, we would have to fly over the most chaotic parts of this place, The Chalk…or so based on your information." said Jeb.

I shook my head, "That's where the Cunning Man and Elves are." I said weakly.

"Don't worry, Captain, I can fly this thing fast and near horizontal like a bullet." said Jeb confidently.

"I sure do hope that." I said as he grabbed the manual override stick.

"Wait, how does thing thing fl-" Magrat was about to ask but the four hypergolic engines kicked into high gear, thrusting our heads against the seats.

During our first Disc-to-Disc flight, we entered 'space' and as such the only bumpy parts of the trip would be liftoff to space and return to atmosphere, but this time we would be travelling like a bullet through the atmosphere.

I would like to emphasize the words 'like a bullet' because we ended up flying in a slanted angle, about forty five degrees, so that we don't get into any unwanted accidents like crashing into a tree or a mountain, it also allowed me to see the ground through the window in addition to the cameras.

Our side mission to evacuate the King and Queen of Lancre was going nominal until, "Captain, all engines are running at a lower thrust than expected…" announced Bill.

"What, how!?" exclaimed Jeb, reaching for the manual override thrust control and jabbing it forward.

It did not help our situation, I had my screen show the thrust status and trajectory, things were not looking good, in fact I recalled our emergency training with the Dragon capsule at that point, "Jeb, I trust your judgement in going forward…but we should execute EEM number three." said Bill.

Jeb looked to me, "Captain, it's your call."

I was against Emergency Escape Maneuver Number Three - Number One was a simple Pad Launch Abort while Number Two was an Orbital Abort, but Number Three felt like cowardice, it was a lander abort, something that was not in Neil Armstrong's dictionary - but something changed my mind.

"EEM THREE, NOW!" I ended up shouting.

"Right, sir!" Jeb said snappily, "What's our designated landing zone?" he asked.

"There, there!" I immediately had a screenshot of what I saw on the cameras forwarded, not just to his visor, but to everyone in this mission; Houston, Hawthorne, The Falcon, Dragon One, everyone.

"What the hell." said Bill when he saw the photo.

Earth eventually buzzed in, "This is Houston - CAPCOM, we're trying to get SpaceX on the line to explain THAT."

"I'll get close to that thing, don't worry." said Jeb.

When the Dragon Two landed, I immediately removed my harness and opened the hatch, "Where are we, this isn't Ankh Morpork, why are we stopping?" asked a clueless Magrat.

There it was, the same thing we all cheered and saw on our screens during February 6, 2018, it was that news-stealing piece of the rocket that had earned SpaceX the full trust of NASA in finishing The Falcon.

In the distance, right behind the object, was the famous horse of The Chalk barely visible against the snow, and I don't want to know what it crashed on, the worst case scenario would be the Feegle mound or maybe there could be an even worse scenario than that!

There it was, the second stage marked by the red Falcon logo with the large black letters spelling 'FH' and the words 'Falcon Heavy' beneath the large letters, powered by a single Merlin-1D Vacuum engine and with Elon Musk's cherry red Tesla Roadster on the fairing adapter, and not to mention the dirt it dug up.

It was also belting out David Bowie's Life On Mars on max volume in an indefinite loop, those Tesla Batteries must be something!

"Captain, how the hell did this happen?" asked Valentina through the comm lines.

"Remember, the Disc sort of went into an orbit heading towards an intercept along the Martian orbit, pretty much where this Roadster was heading, but since the Roadster did not have any sensors on board, we did not know that it would have intercepted the Disc and crashed." My heart felt like it stopped when I spotted a human shaped thing with its arm buried underneath the Falcon Heavy Second Stage.

It was not Starman - the dummy sitting aboard the Roadster, it's still chilling in the Roadster - but it was someone who once lived and whose last few moments was spent getting killed by a Falcon Heavy Second Stage while wearing midnight black…"oh shit!" I exclaimed loudly.

I ran to the body, I fell to my knees, "Damn you humanity!" I cried out, while fighting the urge to vomit.

There it was, a severely decaying corpse of a woman, an old woman with graying hair, who wore a black dress, black pointy hat, and a necklace of a leaping hare, this was Tiffany Aching's older self, the woman who had helped younger Tiffany fight the Cunning Man.

I removed my helmet, felt dizzy, and cursed every single bad word in the lexicon, including the non-English ones! "Captain, what's wrong?" asked Valentina in that soft and gentle voice she would use when she sensed that there's anger floating in the air, well I was outright broadcasting it!

"Remember what I briefed you people about I Shall Wear Midnight, how Tiffany had beaten the Cunning Man?" I began, "Well, you can say that sometime near the ending, you can write 'But then as older Tiffany was about to help the younger Tiffany by setting fire to the area to trap the Cunning Man, she was killed by Elon Musk's f*cking Roadster!', this…THIS is the reason why this Discworld, this version of this fantastical planet, is a crap yard."

There was silence on the line after my long rant, in fact, I thought immediately after that moment that I may have gone overboard, but then again it was a painful idea, that it was possibly our fault for screwing things up badly.

Who would have known that we'd end up cheering for the launch of the rocket that would end up killing the witches? On one hand, we couldn't have known given the erratic orbit of the Disc, but then again 1 in a million chances happen nine times out of ten around here, and if someone said that the odds of the Roadster hitting the Discworld and somehow surviving intact was a million is to one, then it's definitely going to happen.

"This is Houston - Flight…we're…we…we're kind of speechless around here, the Internet is going crazy with the discovery."

"Yeah, well no kidding." I replied, it was unbelievable that we could end up changing a story, someone else's story, this dramatically. Now I know why the Planet Protection Officer of NASA was kind of pissed off about the Falcon Heavy Test Flight.

I then saw something in the distance, the Chalk was a wide and open hill area with not much trees and since it was snowing there's obviously a lot of white, a figure surrounded by this misty darkness stood not far from me, not far from us.

It was with slow comprehension that I realized who it was, but then my enemy at that moment were my own biases, but then as I won a short mental battle with these biases, the figure made these sound that even until now I could never forget, but at the same time I could not describe.

I turned around and saw Tiffany Aching, who was as Not-Tiffany as the Not-a-Flamethrower sold by Elon Musk, and she was wearing her usual green dress which was torn at some parts and was generally dirty, and did I tell you that her eyes were missing?

I was stuck in a corner, this Cunning Man-possessed-Tiffany Aching stood in between me and Dragon Two, "Bill…you better listen to me now, go to Ankh Morpork and get the two safe, then come back for me."

"But, Captain…"

"Not now, Bill, don't argue with me now, I have a fight to win." I said before switching off the transmitter and receiver.

This was not some heroic stupidity I was executing at that point…okay, maybe it was a tiny bit-…a lot, but I had a plan and that is to unlatch the Roadster, hop on it, and RUN!

As the Dragon Two blasted off into the sky, which for a few moments distracted the Not-Tiffany and thus allowing me valuable time to run to the cargo/fairing adapter and detonate the explosive bolts; either the Cunning Man is stupid or my white spacesuit blends in with the white snow and the white Falcon Heavy Second Stage, but the Not-Tiffany was unable to find me.

I grabbed the Starman dummy, shoved him into the passenger's seat, started up the Tesla Roadster - yes, Elon, the keys were in the glove compartment! - and ran for it, the Roadster accelerated faster than a gasoline supercar (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Audi , you name it.)

The quick movement of the Tesla and its bright red against white caught the attention of the Not-Tiffany and she began to give chase, at that moment I switched on the Tesla self-driving Autopilot, then I turned around and stuck my tongue out at that monstrosity, all the while I was rocking out to David Bowie, best day of my life!

I needed a solution, no, I needed a fire, the way Tiffany had killed the Cunning Man was by trapping him in a shrinking circle of fire, now I needed a flamethrower and a really good shot at that thing, I wondered if Elon left a flamethrower somewhere inside the Tesla.

If there was no flamethrower, then the only option would be to bait that Cunning Man near the Falcon Heavy Second Stage and detonate it, we're talking about thousands of delta Vs worth of highly explosive highly refined kerosene and Liquid Oxygen, it would take out the entire Chalk area.

Either way, I had to get away from that thing first, somewhere safe, maybe somewhere the Cunning Man knows that he'd end up being surrounded in, something inside my head told me Baron's Castle or maybe Aching Farm, but then I thought of Feegle Mound.

Eventually I was forced to head to the Baron's Castle because I ended up overshooting the Aching farm, by the looks of it, and the castle was looming up ahead.

If you're driving at a hundred kilometers per hour over dirt road, it would feel hell of a lot bumpy, but the Tesla's design somehow mitigated that effect and it felt a somewhat smooth ride.

When I reached the castle, the drawbridge was still down for some reason as if nothing happened, or that is something happened and the castle was abandoned. I switched off the Autopilot and drove the Roadster into the castle grounds, it was an electric car so it was silent,don't think of it as having the usual engine noises.

I opened the trunk before getting out of the car and when I got out of the car and went to the back, a white futuristic looking gun was sitting in the trunk with the words 'Boring Co.' on it in black, it was a flamethrower!

I shut the trunk and smiled as I hefted the flamethrower in my hands, I then went up to the large wooden doors and knocked, no one answered and the door simply swung slightly open with a loud and theatrical creaking noise, I opened the door just enough so I could squeeze in.

The Baron's castle, the very place where the witches held their final meeting before Tiffany battled the Cunning Man, was now an abandoned and deserted place, its walls unkept, its paintings dusty, the furniture was not cared for, and there was a creaking noise coming from somewhere.

I went after the creaking noise, I guess it was because I have a flamethrower at that point, and thus my confidence sort of ballooned at that point, the confidence that I could take any threat head on. The creaking noise, which began to sound to my ears as footsteps the closer I get to it, came from somewhere in the upper floors.

I went up to the upper floors and found myself in front of a door which was locked, "Is anyone there, I am here to help." I said loudly.

Someone then looked through the keyhole and the door was opened, it was a shaken looking Baron Roland, "Y-…yes, what may I do for you?" he asked.

"What the hell happened to you?" I said.

He rubbed his eyes, "I'm sorry, I-…am trying to forget a big mistake."

"Please don't tell me you had ordered soldiers to dig up the Feegle mound!" I exclaimed.

Baron Roland looked at me and said "How did you know? Are you from around here?" he sounded depressed and an empty shell, speaking in sighs and sometimes being somewhat incoherent.

"Sir, I'm only trying to help, where is Tiffany Aching?" I asked, that was a stupid question because I already know where she was at that point, she was most likely chasing after me.

"She disappeared into the darkness of the forest…and then she came back with no eyes and disappeared from there on." said Roland.

"Okay, how about Preston, one of your guards?" I asked, out of curiosity, he and Tiffany ended up becoming beaus, as in I wrote fan fiction of them getting married at some point.

"He-…jumped off the highest floor of the castle when he found out that Tiffany had lost…he took his own life." said Roland.

The one mistake the Cunning Man did was that he relied on a physical body to go after me, meaning the only way in for the Not-Tiffany is through the door where the Not-a-Flamethrower would be waiting for her!

"Baron, where is your wife?" I asked.

"She's asleep in our hiding place, away from the threats…we no longer know where or what happened to our people." said Roland.

I looked out the window and spotted that darkness in the snow approaching the door, "Alright, Baron, I have some fighting to do."

He did not respond, in fact he looked beyond me and said "Who're you fighting?" he asked.

"Your worst nightmare." I answered before legging it to the entrance hall where I would be waiting for that Not-Tiffany.

When I did reach the entrance hall, everything was quiet and still, too still, in fact it was so still that I couldn't quite believe that it would be a showdown. I decided to try and get the upper hand by keeping my back to the wall right next to the door, so when that Not-Tiffany would enter, I could burn her.

I remembered reaching for the necklace Valentina gave me which was stowed in a small pocket and I held it in my hand, it somehow at least helped me in remaining calm, but then I was forced to let go of it in my pocket and seal my pocket as I heard the door creak.

The door creaked open slowly at the same pace as those you hear in horror movies, the dark figure of this Not-Tiffany walked in dramatically and was looking for me, I do not know why it was so interested in me given that I am not a witch, but I believe that the Cunning Man knew a thing or two about technological superiority.

I screamed at the top of my lungs the battle cry I would usually shout as I took off in a fighter jet, "ARGHHH!" which made the Not-Tiffany face me, allowing me to kick her in the abdomen, which knocked her on the floor, and I just kept kicking her over and over again.

That's when I heard a voice, an evil sounding one, "Go on, keep kicking me, make my day, kill the most powerful witch, I could just kill Magrat later on."

I stopped, "Why did you stop? You're not a witch, you can't possibly defeat me." said the Cunning Man…I think.

I smiled and pointed the flamethrower at the Not-Tiffany and just fired, burning the most powerful witch…or rather the Cunning Man, because you see the thing about Tiffany Aching is that she likes fire, and she is the hare who leaps into the fire, and the fire likes the hare/Tiffany who therefore does not get burned.

As for the Cunning Man however, that would be a completely different story, the fire is his weakness, it's what killed him when he was still human! A cloud of dark mist escaped Tiffany quickly, no it was not the smoke of her burning clothes and/or flesh, it was the Cunning Man.

When I stopped the flamethrower there was a seemingly intact body, my heart was beating fast, I do not know if I had burned Tiffany or if the Cunning Man had killed Tiffany in a last act of spite and hatred, but to my relief the body laying on the floor opened its eyes and began to breath.

I ended up smiling, I looked at the Tesla, and then at the flamethrower, and then at the suit, and just as Tiffany (yes, the actual Tiffany) asked "Who are you?" I exclaimed "THANK YOU ELON!" and did a fist pump.

"Who's Elon? Are you alright?" asked Tiffany.

I then dropped the flamethrower and embraced Tiffany, alright it was a creepy thing to do but if you're hero - who was nearly killed by your own species - survived because of you, who therefore has redeemed the blood on the hands of your species, then of course it was a special moment.

"Um…okay?" said Tiffany, "Who are you?"

I let go of her, "Oh sorry, I am Jack Dudley, Captain Jack Dudley."

"I"m Tiffany Aching…" she then felt dizzy and held her head, "I'm sorry, I can't seem to remember what happ-" she then saw the Tesla Roadster, "Wait, I saw that fall from the sky and kill this witch I saw in the distance."

Oh yeah, she doesn't know who the witch in black with the hare was until the very end where it was revealed that it was her older self, "Yeah, that's okay, the Cunning Man is gone now!" I said happily.

"How do you know about the Cunning Man?" she asked, "Never mind, where is that thing? I was supposed to face it down…"

Oh crap, this is where the bad part comes, "Tiff-…" I sort of kneeled in front of her and held her hand, she was somewhat shorter than I was, "you were possessed by the Cunning Man…"

"But that means that…" she gasped, she was unable to say the words.

"All the witches burned, nearly all; Granny has died, Nanny Ogg, Annagramma maybe, your fellow witches…though Queen Magrat is alive." I said.

Tiffany was those types that know the truth, as in they're not afraid to accept the truth, but this one may have been too hard hitting, "I'm sorry, I…need to…be alone." she said, tears flowing down her eyes.

The teen witch walked to a corner of the entrance hall and went into this trance, she was looking at the last place where she stood, addressing her fellow witches, where Granny had asked 'What's your plan?' and her answer was 'Not to lose'

I decided to check in on the comm lines by switching on my transmitter and receiver, to my surprise I heard applause, cheers, and my name being cheered.

"Hello, this is Hawthorne." said a very, very familiar voice, "you're welcome." said Elon Musk.

"This is Houston -…screw it, this is humanity speaking, we're all feeling a lot of emotions here in Houston, in fact the Internet has been watching your dramatic showdown through your helmet cameras." I heard the Flight Director crying somewhat, "That-…was…it would certainly go down in history as the most dramatic moment for NASA."

"This is The Falcon - Valentina, oh my god, Captain, that was the best!" exclaimed Valentina.

I was apparently being celebrated as a hero but I did not feel like a hero, the voices kept coming, "This is Dragon Two, we heard the action over there and we want a piece of it, we've dropped off the royals and we're now on our way back there."

"This is Houston - CAPCOM, the President of the United States congratulates you for saving humanity, as far as we're aware, the Cunning Man could have infected Earth but you stopped it before that happened, some of us here are chanting 'Medal of Honor'."

"Guys, guys…" I began, suddenly everyone was silent, "I'm not a hero, I was only fixing our mistakes…sorry to Elon for my rant, it turns out that the cause of this had also helped me."

"This is Hawthorne, no offense taken, oh and you can keep the car."

I shook my head and took a deep breath, man that was some action, more action than any of the bombing runs I executed, but as I sunk into this relaxation mode, that all problems were finally resolved, I swore I saw Starman - the dummy - walking across the entrance hall.

"Hey, that's not funny Bill or Jeb!" I exclaimed, I thought that they landed somewhere far and snuck into the old Starman spacesuit and tried to prank me, but then I heard a shout of "CRIVENS!"

I smiled, "Rob Anybody?" I said.

"Aye, Rob?"

"What is it Daft Wullie?"

"Did he just…call yer name?"

There was a loud clonk sound, "What do you think the bigjob said!?"

The helmet popped off and a blue head popped out of from the hole where the head and neck would be, "Where's our Big Wee Hag? We're gunna save her from that daft scunner!"

"I saved her." I said.

The Feegles then trooped out of the suit while staring at me in a curios sort of way, maybe they couldn't believe the fact that I saved her, "Did ya really save her?" asked Rob Anybody, I mean based on the earlier exchange it was Rob Anybody, I could tell so by his voice.

"Yes, I did, go speak to her there." I said.

The Feegles rushed to their Big Wee Hag, while I picked up the helmet and the suit and sat the dummy back to on the Tesla Roadster, I ended up saluting Starman.

Eventually the Dragon Two came and so did Bill and Jeb, who immediately rushed to me and embraced me, shaking my hands, patting my shoulders, and calling me their Captain and a badass.

"Do you hear the ruckus back on Earth? It's loud, Captain, and it's your name being cheered!" said Bill excitedly.

Jeb then whispered - in order to simulate a huge crowd chanting - my name, "Jack Dudley, Jack Dudley!"

While the other two cheered, we saw a downright depressed looking Tiffany walking out through the door, she shot us a glance and said nothing, "Tiffany?" I took a step closer to her.

She shook her head and said, "I don't know, I don't know…"

"It's our fault you lost, we're sorry." I said, "It's our fault, our race's fault, that the witches have burned…"

Tiffany then said lamely "It's okay…" before walking away from us with a long face.

"Ouch, she took it hard." said Bill.

"Of course she took it hard, we screwed her and her team up!" I exclaimed, "Sorry, just-"

"No, I was wrong Captain, that was insensitive." said Bill apologetically, "Look uh…we would for certain be receiving a recall order from the President or from NASA or both, we should head back to the Falcon, this world will fix itself…I hope."

I did not react, I was as empty as Tiffany and Roland, I walked back to the Dragon Two without saying anything to my colleagues, they followed closely behind. I was silent throughout the whole start up and return to orbit.

"This is Houston - Flight, the President of the United States has some few words to say for you, he's doing so at the front of a special session of the United Nations General Assembly."

I remained silent, the President began his speech, "This is the President of the United States, that has got to be the most action packed moment for all of humanity, in fact it happened in the middle of a special session of the United Nations General Assembly attended by heads of governments from across the world, and from this international forum I address our astronauts.

Based on the advice of the President of the Philippines, a well known Discworld expert, we do not need to issue a recall order, instead that power will be up to the Captain and his crew.

You have all done well, we trust you with all our hearts now that you've proven yourselves as not just astronauts but as heroes, ambassadors of humanity, therefore we are giving you freedom to explore the Disc as you think is necessary since there is no longer any threat.

That is all, thank you."

I replied, "This is the Captain of The Falcon, thank you, Mister President, we will be conducting our expedition as we see fit, thank you for trusting us, over and out." I said.

Our trip back to The Falcon took some time, in fact we first had to insert into a Low-Disc Orbit before adjusting our orbit to have an intercept of The Falcon, the whole process took two hours, however it all felt quick somehow as the moments that I had just survived flashed before my eyes.

When we docked back to The Falcon, which itself took thirty minutes of careful adjustments before Jerry announced, "Dragon Two, you have a hard dock."

Once the airlock was cycled and the airlock doors opened, I saw Valentina pop her head into the Dragon Two and saying "Jack!"

I tried to smile, I really did, but I was too tired to do so, she offered a hand to help me into The Falcon, I accepted her hand and she pulled me into the airlock chamber and then into the cargo area, that's where she unlatched her helmet before unlatching mine and kissing me on the lips.

"You're back!" said Valentina excitedly in a voice that had melted all our hearts, but had just barely reignited mine, though her large eyes looking at me had made recharged me a bit.

I embraced her, "Yes I am."

Jeb floated beside me with his helmet off, "Don't worry chief, we won't tell NASA or anyone that you'd be sleeping in Val's cabin tonight." he then gave me a friendly punch on the arm.

I did not laugh nor did I react, "No, I need my own cabin and a rest….a long rest." I said.

Just like that, the big preparation to take back the Chalk and all other affected areas went to nothing, but for the best reason that the Cunning Man was defeated.

Valentina nodded, "Captain, you can sleep in my cabin, I'll leave you alone, honest!"

I had enough energy to nod but apparently not enough to move, I ended up sleeping on the spot, though I was just barely aware of what was going around me as I fell into sleep, though the last thing I remembered was me being floated back to Valentina's cabin.

You know how dreams could be weird sometimes? I somehow found myself floating in space in my spacesuit with the Disc below me and The Falcon far above me, I blinked and then suddenly I found myself in a zen garden of some sorts, it looked like one of those Buddhist gardens with spinning prayer wheels and-…

Yeah, it was the Monastery of the Time Monks, everyone - from the starters to the experts, and even a certain bald man who was the janitor of the place - stood around me.

A young man appeared in front of me, "You seemed to have atoned for the mistakes of your species."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I am time itself, my name is Lobsang Ludd." said the young man, "Your vehicle has caused some troubles here in the Monastery, we had been working on restoring the timeline for two years now, it was the biggest mess we've had since the glass clock was built for the second time."

I nodded and smirked, "Yeah, I know about that…"

"Mister Dudley, your defeating of the Cunning Man had helped our work become easier, we thank you for that, and now we have just sort of pulled your conscience out of your body for a few moments just to inform you that when you wake up the Disc would be back in the way it should be."

I smiled, I felt alive, "Thank you so much." I said.

"Now, now, I think we should give you a present, my master had told me to never take for granted any help received, especially from an honest stranger." said Lobsang, he reached into his cloak and gave me a small trinket, it was a green jade looking stone.

"What does it do?" I ask.

"Nothing precisely…I don't know, Q just gave it to me." said Lobsang.

It was at that moment that I remembered about the necklace, I know it was in my pocket still, "Thank you, sir." I said.

"Now, now, it's time for you to go back." said Lobsang, "You gave us some memorable day here."

When I woke up, it was at the most awkward moment ever, though the first thing I felt in my hand was the green jade stone, now as for the other thing I opened my eyes to, "Oh god, Jack, I thought you're going to wake up later." it was Valentina and she had a towel wrapped around her body as she brushed her floating hair.

"I'm sorry." I said, looking away.

Valentina giggled, "It's okay, we're…sort of in a relationship now, right?"

I nodded, "Right, right." I said, "Excuse me, I think I need to shower."

"You can shower with me." said Valentina, "I am not done yet, I mean I am only getting my hair straight before stepping into the shower."

The Falcon's shower was interesting, the walls were lined with shower heads where the water would be spraying out of, and then the water would be sucked up into drainage holes that would pump it into the water recycling module for other uses.

Yeah…we showered together, naked and all, I guess we both had been developing feelings for one another during training and during the flight to the Disc, it was only then we openly spoke about our feelings did we know how deep it was, and I won't get into the really dirty things we said but I can tell you this, we ended up in a cute water fight - think a snowball fight but with orbs of water instead - where we were laughing loudly and being playful with one another before we dried up and wore our spacesuits.

"Where will we be going now, Captain?" she asked.

"Back on the Discworld, a friend of mine told me that it should all be fixed by now." I said.

"And how much do you trust this guy?" asked Valentina.

"Enough to land this thing on the Disc." I answered.


End file.
